I have first met Chris in Stockholm, in March 1985. IN Those days Anders Lindquist invited me to the Royal Institute of Technology after we had met at a large conference in Kiev in September 1984.  Anders arranged for me to stay in a university hostel where there was no breakfast available. He sent me to have breakfast “with a good American professor and his wife” who were staying at the same place. The professor was Chris. So we first met in his rooms at a breakfast with Chester cheese. During the next few days there were  seminar presentations and  discussions  with Chris and Anders. That’s how I learned about Chris'  background and research.

    What impressed me in Chris' background  is that he moved to control      

     theory from topology, having been tutored  by best specialists in that area.  The  interesting point is that L.S.Pontryagin and his associates 

     V.G.Boltyanski, R.V.Gamkreidze and E.F.Mischenko - the pioneers in  

     mathematics of control  -- had also moved to control theory from topology,    where, in the early fifties, Pontryagin had been an internationally well   recognized figure. 

  Chris and Anders also told me about the existence of  MTNS conference    and invited me again to Stockholm, where in June 1985 there was the MTNS Meeting. Here I saw the MTNS community in its full glory and became acquainted in person with many researchers whose names I  knew from literature.  Chris also introduced me to his closest colleagues  Art Krener, Clyde Martin and T.J.Tarn . I then cooperated with all five of  them for many years later.  

    At that time I had started to work  at IIASA (International Institute  for

    Applied Systems Analysis) as Chairman of the Systems and Decision 

    Sciences Program, so during my March visit to KTH I invited Chris and 

    Anders to come there in summer. But Chris with his bustling energy and

    friendliness  not only came, but organized a IIASA Workshop on

    Adaptive  Control, a very productive East-West meeting, attended , apart   from those mentioned above, also by Alberto Isidori, George Leitmann, Steve Morse, Pravin Varaiya, Mark A.Krasnoselski, Vladimir S.Pugachev  and other control celebrities.

     Our acquaintance led to our good friendship and cooperation. We me  at many places –several times at IIASA, at  Washington University in St. Louis  during my visits there and at MTNS –1995 organized by Chris and his  colleagues.  In 1989 we met at the IFAC NOLCOS Symposium, in Capri,  where in our spare time,  we took a boat to the  Blue Grotto and listened to   “O Sola Mio”  beautifully sung  by one of the boatmen. A year later Chris,   Clyde and TJ were in Russia at famous Lake Baikal in Siberia, then in Moscow where we visited the Kremlin and  Red Square.

1. In the late nineties there was an accident with my younger son when he  was on vacation in USA. After that he and his mother, my wife  Natasha  and partly myself moved to USA. During this difficult  period  Chris organized a medical consultation for my son by a famous
   

2. American specialist at the Medical Center of Washington University.
   

This was very  useful and helpful,  but not very easy to organize.

All our family is VERY grateful to him.

       Chris'  outstanding contributions to nonlinear control are widely

     appreciated everywhere and are well known in Russia. He was always

     supportive of Russian-American cooperation  in our research area and did a lot to have joint meetings of different levels   The Russian control-

     theoretic research community  mourns together with their

     American colleagues his premature departure.

      I last saw Chris in September 2009 during the Byrnes-Lindquist

     Workshop at KTH. There we also discussed a possible Workshop in

     Russia within the closest years  for which he was preparing,

as he said, a  list of potential American participants.

Hope this will come true in memory  of  Chris.