David Quinn Mayne (23 April 1930 – 27 May 2024) was a South African-born British academic, engineer, teacher and author. His pioneering and lasting contribution is in the field of

control systems engineering Control engineering, also known as control systems engineering and, in some European countries, automation engineering, is an engineering discipline that deals with control systems, applying control theory to design equipment and systems with d ...

. His research interests centred on

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

and optimization-based design,

nonlinear control Nonlinear control theory is the area of control theory which deals with systems that are nonlinear system, nonlinear, time-variant system, time-variant, or both. Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that ...

, control of constrained systems,

model predictive control Model predictive control (MPC) is an advanced method of process control that is used to control a process while satisfying a set of constraints. It has been in use in the process industries in chemical plants and oil refineries since the 1980s. I ...

and

adaptive control Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which must adapt to a controlled system with parameters which vary, or are initially uncertain. For example, as an aircraft flies, its mass will slowly decrease as a result of fuel consump ...

Career

Having obtained his BSc.(Eng) at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...

David Mayne began his career in 1950 as a lecturer there (1950–54; 1957–59). In 1954 he took up a two year post working as an electrical engineer at the

British Thomson-Houston British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British engineering and heavy industry, heavy industrial company, based at Rugby, Warwickshire, England. Originally founded to sell products from the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, it soon became a manufac ...

Company, Rugby, England. At the end of 1956 he returned to his academic post at the University of Witwatersrand to develop a new course in

automatic control Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

and gaining a MSc.(Eng). He next applied for a research position at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

. Impressed by his MSc thesis,

Arnold Tustin Arnold Tustin, (16 July 1899 – 9 January 1994), was a British engineer and Professor of Engineering at the University of Birmingham and at Imperial College London who made important contributions to the development of control engineering and i ...

and

John Westcott John Hugh Westcott (3 November 1920 – 10 October 2014) was a British scientist specialising in control systems and Professor of Computing and Automation at Imperial College London. Career Westcott was educated at Wandsworth Grammar School, ...

, appointed him as lecturer. He lectured at Imperial College London from 1959-67 and in 1967 obtained his DSc (Eng) and PhD at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

under John Westcott. He was a Research Fellow at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

(1971). At Imperial College he was Professor of

Control theory Control theory is a field of control engineering and applied mathematics that deals with the control system, control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the applic ...

(1971–91) as well as concurrently heading the Department of Electrical Engineering (1984–88). He was subsequently a professor in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

from 1989-96. In 1996 he became Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Investigator in the Control and Power Research Group of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London. He was named honorary professor at

Beihang University Beihang University (BUAA; formerly as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The univers ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

in 2006. His students included

Peter Caines Peter Edwin Caines, FRSC (born March 8, 1945) is a control theorist and James McGill Professor and Macdonald Chair in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, which he joined in 1980. He ...

Contribution to science

Mayne's research work is regarded as not only having had a lasting impact on the development of

control theory Control theory is a field of control engineering and applied mathematics that deals with the control system, control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the applic ...

, but his leadership style has inspired generations of new researchers. Among his many breakthroughs, arguably his most important contribution was his development of a rigorous mathematical method for analysing

Model predictive control Model predictive control (MPC) is an advanced method of process control that is used to control a process while satisfying a set of constraints. It has been in use in the process industries in chemical plants and oil refineries since the 1980s. I ...

algorithms (MPC). It is currently used in tens of thousands of applications and is a core part of the advanced control technology by hundreds of process control producers. MPC's major strength is its capacity to deal with nonlinearities and hard constraints in a simple and intuitive fashion. His work underpins a class of algorithms that are provably correct, heuristically explainable, and yield control system designs which meet practically important objectives. Parisini and Astolfi consider that, "Mayne is also responsible for developing the first two-filter solution to the

smoothing problem The smoothing problem (not to be confused with smoothing in statistics, image processing and other contexts) is the problem of estimating an unknown probability density function recursively over time using incremental incoming measurements. It is ...

. This opened the door to substantial developments and is recognised as a pivotal contribution and precursor of the so-called

particle filtering Particle filters, also known as sequential Monte Carlo methods, are a set of Monte Carlo algorithms used to find approximate solutions for filtering problems for nonlinear state-space systems, such as signal processing and Bayesian statistical ...

. Another cutting-edge contribution was his work on optimization-based design. He was an early user of exact penalty functions for

using

sequential quadratic programming Sequential quadratic programming (SQP) is an iterative method for constrained nonlinear optimization, also known as Lagrange-Newton method. SQP methods are used on mathematical problems for which the objective function and the constraints are twi ...

. The exact penalty method overcomes the widely referenced Maratos effect, identified by one of Mayne’s Ph.D. students. He also contributed to the early development of algorithms for non-differentiable and semi-infinite optimization problems".

Personal life and death

David Quinn Mayne was born in

Germiston Germiston, also known as kwaDukathole, is a city in the East Rand region of Gauteng, South Africa, administratively forming part of the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since the latter's establishment in 2000. It functions as the m ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. He completed his education up to Master's level at the

. Early in his career he married fellow South African, Josephine. They had three daughters. The family moved to the UK in the 1950s where Mayne continued his research. Mayne died in Oxford on 27 May 2024, at the age of 94.

Awards and affiliations

Giorgio Quazza Medal The Giorgio Quazza Medal is an award given by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) to a distinguished control engineer, presented at each IFAC Triennial International World Congress. It was established in 1979, as a memorial to ...

, 2014 *

IEEE Control Systems Award The IEEE Control Systems Award is a technical field award given to an individual by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for outstanding contributions to control systems engineering, science or technology". It is an IEEE- ...

, 2009 * Fellow,

International Federation of Automatic Control The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), founded in September 1957 in France, is a multinational federation of 49 national member organizations (NMO), each one representing the engineering and scientific societies concerned with a ...

, 2006 * Honorary Fellow

, 2000 * Hon. DTech

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, 1995 *

Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in United K ...

1987 * Sir Harold Hartley Medal 1986 *

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Fellow 1985 *

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

FIEEE, Fellow 1981 * Foreign Member of Academia Nacional de Ingeniera,

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

1981 *

Institution of Engineering and Technology The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution. The IET was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), dating back to 1871,Engin ...

, Fellow 1980 *

IET Heaviside Premium (1979 & 1984) *

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British UK Research Councils, Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical scienc ...

EPSRC Senior Research Fellow (1979-1980)

Selected publications

* ''Differential Dynamic Programming'' (1970) * D. Q. Mayne and R. W. Brockett (editors), Geometric Methods in System Theory, D. Reidel Publishing Co., (1973). * * Rawlings, James B.; Mayne, David Q.; and Diehl, Moritz M.; ''Model Predictive Control: Theory, Computation, and Design'' (2nd Ed.), Nob Hill Publishing, LLC, (Oct. 2017)

Papers

* D. Q. Mayne, Optimal Non-Stationary Filters, Chapter 7 in An Exposition of Adaptive Control, Pergamon Press, 1962. * D. Q. Mayne, Optimal Non-Stationary Estimation of the Parameters of a Linear System with Gaussian Inputs, Journal of Electronics and Control, 14(1): 101--112, 1963. * D. Q. Mayne, Parameter Estimation, Automatica, 3(3/4):245--256, 1966. *D. Q. Mayne, A Gradient Method for Determining Optimal Control of Nonlinear Stochastic Systems, Proceedings of IFAC Symposium, Theory of Self-Adaptive Control Systems, editor P. H. Hammond, Plenum Press, 19--27, 1965. * D. Q. Mayne, A Solution of the Smoothing Problem for Linear Dynamic Systems", Automatica, 4:73--92, 1966. * D. Q. Mayne, A Second-Order Gradient Method for Determining Optimal Trajectories of Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, International Journal of Control, 3:85--95, 1966. * G. F. Bryant and D. Q. Mayne, A Minimum Principle for a Class of Discrete-Time Stochastic Systems, IEEE Transactions Automatic Control, 14(4):401--403, 1969. * J. E. Handschin and D. Q. Mayne, Monte Carlo Techniques to Estimate the Conditional Expectation in Multistage Nonlinear Filtering, International Journal of Control, 9(5):547--559, 1966. * D. Q. Mayne, Differential Dynamic Programming---a Unified Approach to Optimal Control, in Advances in Control Systems, editor C. T. Leondes, Academic Press, 10: 179--254, 1973. * G. F. Bryant and D. Q. Mayne, The Maximum Principle, International Journal of Control, 20(6):1021--1054, 1974. * *

Papers on optimization and optimal control

* Mayne, D. Q. and Polak, E., First Order, Strong Variations Algorithms for Optimal Control, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 16(3/4):277--301, 1975. * D. Q. Mayne and E. Polak, Feasible Directions Algorithms for Optimization Problems with Equality and Inequality Constraints, Mathematical Programming, 11(1):67--80, 1976. * Polak, E. and Mayne, D. Q., An Algorithm for Optimization Problems with Functional Inequality Constraints, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 21(2):184--193, 1976. * D. Q. Mayne, Sufficient Conditions for a Control to be a Strong Minimum, Journal of Optimization and Applications, 21(3):339--352, 1977. * D. Q. Mayne, E. Polak and R. Trahan, An Outer Approximations Algorithm for Computer Aided Design Problems, Journal of Optimization and Applications, 28(3):231--352, 1979. * Mayne, D. Q. and Polak, E., An Exact Penalty Function Algorithm for Control Problems with Control and Terminal Equality Constraints---Part 1, Journal of Optimization and Applications, 32(2):211--246, 1980. * Mayne, D. Q. and Polak, E., An Exact Penalty Function Algorithm for Control Problems with Control and Terminal Equality Constraints---Part 2, Journal of Optimization and Applications, 32(3):345--363, 1980. * Polak, E. and Mayne, D. Q., On the Solution of Singular Value Inequalities over a Continuum of Frequencies, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 26(3):690--695, 1981. * Polak, E. and Mayne, D. Q., Design of Nonlinear Feedback Controllers, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 26(3):730--733, 1981. * Mayne, D. Q., Polak, E. and Voreadis, A., A Cut Map Algorithm for Design Problems with Tolerances, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, 29(1):35--46, 1982. * Mayne, D. Q. and Polak, E., Nondifferentiable Optimization via Adaptive Smoothing, Journal of Optimization and Applications, 43(4):601--613, 1984. * D. Q. Mayne and E. Polak, A Superlinearly Convergent Algorithm for Constrained Optimization Problems, Mathematical Programming Studies, 16:45--61, 1982. * Polak, E., Mayne, D. Q. and Stimler, D. M., Control System Design via Semi-Infinite Optimization, Proceedings of the IEEE, 72(12):1777--1795, 1984. * E. Polak and D. Q. Mayne, Algorithm Models for Non-Differentiable Optimization, SIAM Journal of Control and Optimization, 23:477--491, 1985. * Pantoja, J. F. A. de O. and D. Q. Mayne, A Sequential Quadratic Programming Algorithm for Discrete Optimal Control Problems with Control Inequality Constraints, International Journal of Control, 53(4):823--836, 1991. * E. Polak, T. H. Yang and D. Q. Mayne, A Method of Centers Based on Barrier Functions for Solving Optimal Control Problems with Continuum State and Control Constraints, in New Trends in System Theory, editors G. Conte, A. M. Perdon and B. Wyman, Birkhauser, 591--598, 1991.

References

External links

Biodata at Debrett's

David Q. Mayne publications (with Saša V. Raković, and others)

David Q. Mayne aided the creation of software that he contributed to algorithmically
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayne, David 1930 births 2024 deaths British electrical engineers Academics of Imperial College London South African electrical engineers South African mathematicians 20th-century mathematicians South African scientists University of California, Davis faculty Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the IEEE Academic staff of the University of the Witwatersrand South African people of British descent 20th-century South African engineers 20th-century South African mathematicians