Studying Under Prof. R.E. Kalman [Historical Perspectives]

When Prof. Kalman bustled into the classroom during my first quarter at Stanford in 1968, it seemed like a return to normalcy. He was hurrying back from a meeting abroad and picked up a piece of chalk to write: THEOREM, and then PROOF. I had been through three months of generalized mayhem in Paris where I had attempted to get exams organized at the Law and Economics University. All of a sudden I was thrown several years back to my math and physics courses, when rewriting at night the notes I had gleaned from the board during the day brought sense and order.