In May 2023, the scientific community celebrated the 110th anniversary of Aizerman’s birth. Mark Aizerman, in full Mark Aronovich Aizerman, was a famous Russian researcher and teacher, one of the scientific ideologists of the Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR (Russian) Academy of Sciences, Honored Man of Science and Technology, Lenin Prize Laureate, Dr. Sci. (Eng.), and Prof.

Having laid the foundations of many of its chapters, Aizerman became an inter vivos classic of the control science. He worked on a rich variety of problems: from abstract issues of stability theory to pure engineering like pneumatic device design and medical challenges such as treatment of Parkinson’s disease. His contribution to automatic control, pattern recognition, and decision-making is seminal.

Aizerman’s life reflected almost the entire 20th century with its boiling passions, the rise of scientific thought, technological advance, “death factories” and concentration camps as well as with its spiritual, scientific, and cultural life. The personal life of this remarkable man absorbed and reflected many aspects of that time.

While a student of Bauman Moscow State Technical School, Aizerman joined the Research Automobile and Tractor Institute (NATI) and was actively involved in science. His talent as a researcher, inventor, and creative person, able to carry others along with him, manifested itself well there. During the pre-War years, brilliant teachers—Academicians N.N. Luzin and A.A. Andronov and Professor G.V. Shchipanov—entered Aizerman’s life. Those scientists not only academically supervised but also guided their students through life to polish their talent: by their own everyday deeds, actions, and example. Aizerman greatly valued their trust and friendship: he did everything possible to help them in numerous hard moments of those times.

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Aizerman was already in a doctorate program and had an exemption from active duty. However, without informing anyone, he volunteered for the front. According to Aizerman’s memories, he found himself in one of the most difficult periods of the War and retreated with a tank unit to Kharkiv. After the heaviest tank battles near Kharkiv, the almost completely destroyed tank unit was commissioned to reform in Siberia; engineer-captain Aizerman was appointed the head of a research unit at the research and testing ground in Kubinka (near Moscow).

At the end of the War, Aizerman was reinstated in his doctorate program by request of Major-General V. I. Kovalenkov, Director of the Institute of Automation and Remote Control (IARC) and Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. By that time, Academician A. A. Andronov was his scientific supervisor. And Aizerman linked his destiny with Andronov and IARC.

In 1946, “Laboratory” entered his life, once and forever. Aizerman always pronounced this word with a capital letter. The Laboratory was his lifelong love, fame, and responsibility for “everything and everyone” in it, including the fates of entrusted people and the so-called “Laboratory’s climate.” The Laboratory repeatedly changed the number and name (in the last 30 years, it was Laboratory No. 25). Many talented scientists passed through it; some of them headed new Laboratories of the Institute based on Laboratory No. 25 (for example, Laboratories No. 11 and No. 16 in the present day). Every member of the Laboratory always remembered that time with deep gratitude.

Aizerman had a unique and uncommon talent: he organically could not (and even considered wrong for a scientist to) work in the same area for a long time. According to his point of view, a true researcher always “explores,” pioneers, and discovers new horizons in science. During his life, Aizerman studied motor control, tank turning mechanisms, stability, automatic control, finite automata, pneumatics and pneumonics, bionics, pattern recognition, general choice and voting problems, etc. In each area mentioned, Aizerman and his employees wrote seminal works and managed to raise the level of research in the USSR and world science in a few years.

Aizerman’s intensive international activities contributed to the international prestige of the Institute as a leading scientific center of the world.

Aizerman was an outstanding teacher and lecturer. No matter where Aizerman’s lectures were held—in scientific centers of the Soviet Union, in the city hall of Naples, or Peking University—the audience was overcrowded and the undying interest of listeners turned these lectures into long-hour discussions. For many years, he headed the Department of Theoretical Mechanics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) as well as organized and took an active part in the work of the MIPT basic department at the Institute of Control Sciences.

Aizerman’s main books are as follows:

1. Theory of Choice, Studies in Mathematical and Managerial Economics, North Holland, 1995. — 324 p. (coauthor F.T. Aleskerov);
2. Elementy teorii vybora. Psevdokriterii i psevdokriterial’nyi vybor (Elements of Choice Theory. Pseudo-criteria and Pseudo-criteria Choice), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences RAS, 1994. — 216 p. (coauthors V.I. Vol’skii and B.M. Litvakov);
3. Vybor variantov: osnovy teorii (Choice of Alternatives: Theoretical Foundations), Moscow: Nauka, 1990. — 240 p. (coauthor F.T. Aleskerov);
4. Issledovaniya po teorii struktur (Studies on the Theory of Structures), Moscow: Nauka, 1988. — 202 p. (coauthor E.R. Caianiello);
5. Psevdokriterii i psevdokriterial’nyi vybor (o nekotorykh obobshcheniyakh teorii vybora variantov) (Pseudo-criteria and Pseudo-criteria Choice (on Some Generalizations of the Theory of Choice of Alternatives)), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1987. — 48 p. (coauthor B.M. Litvakov);
6. Topics in the General Theory of Structures, Theory and Decision Library D:, Ed. by E.R. Caianiello and M.A. Aizerman, Springer, 1987. — 220 p.;
7. Problemy logicheskogo obosnovaniya v obshchei teorii vybora. Urovni i kriterii klassicheskoi ratsional’nosti vybora (Problems of Logical Justification in the General Theory of Choice. Levels and Criteria of Classical Rationality of Choice), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1982. — 80 p. (coauthor A.V. Malishevskii);
8. Problemy logicheskogo obosnovaniya v obshchei teorii vybora. Primery analiza ratsional’nosti mekhanizmov vybora (Problems of Logical Justification in the General Theory of Choice. Examples of Rationality Analysis for Choice Mechanisms), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1982. — 72 p. (coauthor A.V. Malishevskii);
9. Problemy logicheskogo obosnovaniya v obshchei teorii vybora. Obshchaya model’ vybora i ego klassicheski-ratsional’nye osnovaniya (Problems of Logical Justification in the General Theory of Choice. The General Model of Choice and Its Classically Rational Foundations), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1980. — 71 p. (coauthor A.V. Malishevskii);
10. Klassicheskaya mekhanika (Classical Mechanics), Moscow: Nauka, 1980. — 368 p.;
11. Mekhanizmy upravleniya myshechnoi aktivnost’yu (norma i patologiya) (Mechanisms of Muscle Activity Control: Norm and Pathology), Moscow: Nauka, 1974. — 165 p. (coauthors E.A. Andreeva, E.I. Kandel’, and L.A. Tenenbaum);
12. Metod potentsial’nykh funktsii v teorii obucheniya mashin (The Method of Potential Functions in Machine Learning), Moscow: Nauka, 1970. — 384 p. (coauthors E.M. Braverman and L.I. Rozonoer);
13. Pneumatic and Hydraulic Control Systems, Seminar on Pneumohydraulic Automation (1st Session), vol. 1, London: Pergamon, 1968. — 410 p.;
14. Pneumatic and Hydraulic Control Systems, Seminar on Pneumohydraulic Automation (2nd and 3rd Sessions), vol. 2, Elsevier, 1968. — 250 p.;
15. O nekotorykh mekhanizmakh upravleniya skeletnymi myshtsami (On Some Control Mechanisms for Skeletal Muscles), Moscow: Institute of Control Sciences, the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1968. — 78 p. (coauthor E.A. Andreeva);
16. Tekhnicheskaya kibernetika. Teoriya avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya. Kniga 2. Analiz i sintez lineinykh nepreryvnykh i diskretnykh sistem avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Engineering Cybernetics. Theory of Automatic Control. Book 2. Analysis and Design of Linear Continuous and Discrete Automatic Control Systems), Moscow: Mashinostroenie, 1967. — 682 p. (coauthors G.A. Bendrikov, A.Ya. Lerner, B.N. Petrov, and Ya.Z. Tsypkin);
17. Logik-Automaten-Algorithmen, Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1967. — 431 p. (coauthors L.A. Gusev, L.I. Rozonoer, I.M. Smirnova, and A.A. Tal’);
18. Teoriya avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Theory of Automatic Regulation), 3rd ed., Moscow: Nauka, 1966. — 452 p.;
19. Absolute Stability of Regulator Systems, 1st ed., Holden-Day, 1964. — 182 p. (coauthor F.R. Gantmakher);
20. Logika. Avtomaty. Algoritmy (Logic, Automata, Algorithms), Moscow: Fizmatlit, 1963. — 556 p. (coauthors L.A. Gusev, L.I. Rozonoer, I.M. Smirnova, and A.A. Tal’);
21. Absolyutnaya ustoichivost’ reguliruemykh sistem (Absolute Stability of Regulated Systems), Moscow: the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1963. — 139 p. (coauthor F.R. Gantmakher);
22. Theory of Automatic Control, Adiwes International Series, Pergamon, 1963. — 532 p.;
23. Vvedenie v dinamiku avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya dvigatelei (Introduction to the Dynamics of Automatic Regulation of Motors), St. Petersburg: Mashgiz, 1960. — 150 p.;
24. Lektsii po teorii avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya (Lectures on the Theory of Automatic Regulation), Moscow: Gostekhizdat, 1956. — 354 p.;
25. Teoriya avtomaticheskogo regulirovaniya dvigatelei (Theory of Automatic Regulation of Motors), Moscow: Gostekhizdat, 1952. — 524 p.;
26. Avtomatika pereklyucheniya peredach (Automatic Devices of Gear Shifting), Moscow: Mashgiz, 1948. — 140 p.;
27. Mekhanizmy povorota tankov (osnovy teorii) (Tank Turning Mechanisms: Theoretical Foundations), Moscow, 1947. — 83 p.

Many of these books are presented in the Institute’s database:
https://www.ipu.ru/d7ipu/books_library_grid?combine=Айзерман

The list of journal papers by Aizerman is available at Math-Net.Ru:
https://www.mathnet.ru/php/person.phtml?option_lang=rus&personid=26916

The list of his papers in Avtomatika i Telemekhanika can be found at:
https://www.mathnet.ru/php/search.phtml?jrnid=at&tjrnid=at&wshow=search&option_lang=eng

For their English versions, see the microfilm collection of Automation and Remote Control:
https://archive.org/details/pub_automation-and-remote-control

Publications about M.A. Aizerman

Also, see the Wikipedia page devoted to Aizerman:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Айзерман,_Марк_Аронович

Scopus Author ID: 6602751691