Università degli studi di Padova

When I first met Chris two things struck me. The first was his immediate and genuine friendliness and the sharp spark of intelligence emanating from his eyes. His eyes moved fast, actually everything about him was fast: his thinking,  his understanding, and also  the way he used to tell   his famous jokes.  So fast that    I would often miss the punchline and had later to ask other people to repeat them for me.

At Harvard in the late seventies when we first met, he had a big beard, a long pony tail and looked  like he didn't care much about his appearance. These times were, if I remember correctly, a period of severe economic recession with Governor Dukakis   exhorting   everyone to ``tighten their belts".   Chris used to  say he couldn't be affected by the exhortation, as he could not  afford a belt. We met again during those times on several other occasions, for example,  at  Les Arcs in France and in  Algarve in Portugal where we shared  system theory, wine,  big langustines and   aguardiente de madrogno. That cemented our friendship.

Chris has always been an  extremely curious human being, thirsty for understanding not only of mathematics but also of human beings and  other cultures. He was   fascinated by    European and especially  by Italian culture. He started visiting  Italy, and came to Rome and also to Padova to visit me several times. In one of the early   visits to Padova ( I don't remember exactly when)  he asked my advice on a very personal matter. That was probably the only time in which I disagreed with him, in decades of true and deep  friendship. In retrospect however I think that my suggestion was probably   correct.

In the early eighties he left Harvard for a frontier adventure to build a new control and systems group  at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. I remember him coming to Padova full of enthusiasm and it didn't take many words to  recruit me to join in the new group he was  building at  ASU. There  I had then the great luck of sharing with him  a couple  of really heroic  professional years. He attracted a  flow of great people  and there were continuously     new  ideas and new problems around to discuss.  Our friendship deeply   involved  also our families and  our small children (at that time) Alberto and Kathleen.   With little Alberto we used to call him “Zio (uncle) Chris” and long  since Arizona, for Alberto,  he has remained zio Chris forever. That experience with him has marked my life.

After the ASU experience he    moved to Washington University in St. Louis  where he was   almost immediately elected Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). In a few years   he brought the SEAS to an unprecedented  level of excellence.     I  also   visiting  WashU on many occasions,  including my sabbatical in  1995-96,  and our lives  intersected there again  to a deep extent.

Now, I feel   like I have lost a brother.  May I say,  let us remember him not only as a mathematical genius and great academic leader, but also as an extremely  generous and caring human being.