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This is the 28th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy...
This is the 28th volume of Memorial Tributes compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achievements of its members and international members. These volumes are intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contributions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind. In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and the engineering accomplishments of the deceased. Through its members and international members, the Academy carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in 1964.
Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are elected on the basis of significant contributions to engineering theory and practice and to the literature of engineering or on the basis of demonstrated unusual accomplishments in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology. The National Academies share a responsibility to advise the federal government on matters of science and technology. The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abilities, interests, and achievements of our members and international members, our colleagues and friends, whose special gifts we remember in this book.
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BY ANDREW ALLEYNE, CARLYLE HEDRICK, AND MASAYOSHI TOMIZUKA
JOHN KARL HEDRICK was born in 1944 and grew up on Long Island. An avid tennis player from the age of 12, he competed in local, regional, national, and even a few international tournaments. One summer, as teenagers, he and Arthur Ashe played doubles together while traveling through the East and Southeast.
Hedrick attended the University of Michigan on a tennis scholarship, studying engineering mechanics and graduating in 1966. While there, he played for the University of Michigan tennis team and, as captain, won the Big Ten championship twice. Although he dreamed of playing professional tennis, he ultimately pursued a graduate degree at Stanford University in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. He worked with Arthur Bryson (NAE 1970), writing a thesis on optimization and optimal control of flight plans for aircraft, earning an M.S. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1971.
In 1970, Hedrick took a position as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Arizona State University. After a few years, he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was on the faculty from 1974 to 1988. There, he laid the foundations for his career-long research, studying the dynamics and control of vehicles. His lab, the Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory, initially focused on the study of ground vehicle dynamics and control. His research included actively controlling the suspension interfaces between vehicles and their travel surfaces, both road and rail. During this time, he also turned his attention to the control of nonlinear dynamic systems, making contributions to sliding mode control, nonlinear estimation, and other algorithmic methods.
In 1988, he moved the Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory from MIT to the University of California, Berkeley, where he spent the rest of his academic career. He continued studying vehicle behavior and expanded his research to include interactions among groups of vehicles. This work contributed to some of the early research community’s forays into autonomous driving among groups of ground vehicles on highways. His early analysis of the string stability of controlled vehicle platoons provided fundamental insights into how interconnected networks of systems need to be controlled, as well as their fundamental limits. At Berkeley, Hedrick also studied marine and air vehicles.
A respected faculty member and natural academic leader, Hedrick served as chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department from 1999 to 2004. He was also the director of Berkeley’s Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) Research Program from 1997 to 2003, leading breakthroughs in autonomous vehicle research. In 2013, he became the founder and co-director of the Hyundai Center of Excellence in Integrated Vehicle Safety Systems and Control.
Hedrick was a devoted teacher and leader both on campus and beyond. He taught highly popular courses in nonlinear control and vehicle dynamics and was a beloved advisor and mentor to many students and colleagues. He graduated more than 70 Ph.D. students, many of whom became well-known leaders in academia and industry. He received numerous honors during his lifetime, including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Rufus Oldenburger Medal in 2006 and induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2014.
In addition to his professional achievements, Hedrick was equally devoted to his family, including his wife, Carlyle, whom he met at Stanford. The couple had three daughters: Ashley, Tristan, and Ryan. Hedrick was heavily involved in youth sports with his daughters, including coaching soccer and tennis.