Michael Athans (born Michael Athanassiades in Drama, Greece, May 3, 1937 - May 26, 2020) was a Greek-American control theorist and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a Fellow of the IEEE (1973) and a Fellow of the AAAS (1977). He was the recipient of numerous awards for his contributions in the field of control theory. A pioneer in the field of control theory, he helped shape modern control theory and spearheaded the field of control system design and the field of robust control. Athans was a member of the technical staff at Lincoln Laboratory from 1961 to 1964, and a Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty member from 1964 to 1998. Upon retirement, Athans move