Rudolf Kálmán has passed away at the age of 86, it has been confirmed.
The Hungarian-born engineer and mathematican became world-famous after creating the “Kálmán filter”, a mathematical technique widely used in computer control systems, navigation systems, avionics, and outer-space vehicles.
Kálmán was born in Budapest in 1930 and emigrated to the United States in 1943 where he studied electrical engineering at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He gained a doctoral degree from Columbia University in New York City in 1957 and his “Kálmán filter” was used during the Apollo program as well as in the NASA Space Shuttle, in US Navy submarines, and in aerospace weapons, such as cruise missiles.
During his prolific scientific career, Kálmán worked as a leading researcher in Baltimore and Zürich and also as a professor at Stanford University and at the University of Florida.
He was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American National Academy of Engineering. He was a foreign member of the Hungarian, French, and Russian Academies of Sciences and he was awarded several honorary doctorates and prizes acround the world.