BELMONT, MASSACHUSETTS — Dimitri Bertsekas died on June 3, 2026. He died at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, at the age of 83.

Bertsekas held the title of Fulton Professor of Computational Decision Making at Arizona State University. He also held the title of Jerry McAfee (1940) Emeritus Professor in Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His research spanned optimization, control, large-scale computation, reinforcement learning, and artificial intelligence.

Born in Greece, Bertsekas earned his undergraduate degree at the National Technical University of Athens. He obtained a Master of Science in electrical engineering from George Washington University in 1969. Two years later, he obtained a PhD in system science from MIT in 1971.

His faculty career began at Stanford University, where he spent three years. He then served on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for five years.

Bertsekas returned to MIT in 1979. He served as a principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at the institution. He remained with MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science until 2019.

In 2019, he became a full-time faculty member at Arizona State University in Tempe. Arizona State University is a public university in Tempe, Arizona.

Bertsekas authored or co-authored over 20 books, monographs, and textbooks. He also founded the publishing company Athena Scientific. Beyond academia, he served as an editor for several scientific journals.

He served as a consultant to various private companies. Additionally, he served as chief scientific advisor of Bayforest Technologies. Bayforest Technologies is a quantitative investment company based in London.

Colleagues and former students recalled his influence on their professional development. Asu Ozdaglar, department head of EECS at MIT, described their professional relationship. "Dimitri played a defining role in my career," Ozdaglar said. "I decided to change my research focus after taking his nonlinear optimization class." She noted the lasting effect of his teaching methods on her own work.

Ozdaglar said the conceptual clarity and the mathematical rigor he has brought to every topic, combined with his ability to connect theory to important problems, established a foundation that has continued to inform her scholarly work in the years to follow.

Jinane Abounadi, executive director of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program, also reflected on her time studying under Bertsekas. "I feel so fortunate to have had Dimitri as my professor and advisor," Abounadi said. "I had the opportunity to learn about optimization, dynamic programming, and neuro-dynamic programming from a true master." She described the personal hospitality extended by Bertsekas and his family.

Abounadi said they had wonderful dinners in their home and still enjoy looking at the beautiful photographs he took of their children. She characterized the scale of his absence within their professional circle. "Our community has lost a giant," she said. "His contributions will continue to impact generations to come." Abounadi is Greek computer scientist and mathematician.

Steven E. Shreve, Orion Hoch University Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, shared a memory of his early interactions with Bertsekas. "Rather than answering my question directly, Dimitri gave me a preliminary draft of his manuscript, which eventually became his book 'Dynamic Programming and Stochastic Control,' and asked me to proofread it," Shreve said. This approach provided him with a unique educational experience.

Shreve said from this manuscript, he learned the theory of dynamic programming and mastered many important special cases. "Talking with Dimitri as I read, I received one-on-one instruction." Massachusetts had a population of 6,984,205 according to the U.S. Census Bureau 2022 American Community Survey.

Bertsekas held prominent academic positions at two major research universities over a career spanning more than four decades. His work in optimization and artificial intelligence formed the basis for numerous textbooks used in engineering education. He authored or co-authored over 20 books, monographs, and textbooks, and founded Athena Scientific to publish technical literature. His transition from MIT to Arizona State University in 2019 marked a late-career shift to a public university in the southwestern United States.

The tributes from former students and colleagues describe his role as an educator who connected theoretical mathematics to practical problems. Figures such as Ozdaglar and Shreve cited specific classroom and mentoring experiences that shaped their own research trajectories. His service as a consultant and chief scientific advisor indicated the application of his theoretical work in private industry, including the financial sector through his role with Bayforest Technologies.