Joseph Bentsman [People in Control]

I got into control mainly through following in the footsteps of my father, who was an electric motor drive control engineer. My dad intended to obtain a Ph.D., and the books that he assembled for this purpose piqued my interest in the subject when I was 16. So I enrolled in the electric drives control engineering program at Belarus Polytechnic. After graduation, I worked for a short period of time in industry in metal-cutting machine tools control. After coming to the United States, I entered the Ph.D. program at the Illinois Institute of Technology under the direction of Prof. Semyon Meerkov, who provided a real inspiration for pursuing practically significant theoretical research, coining a phrase: "If the theory is not supported by the practice, that's too bad for the practice!" How true this phrase was, I found, as ten years and very talented students were required to solve the Nucor Steel mold oscillator distortion problem.