Emeritus Professor of Engineering Allan E. Pearson, 89, passed away on Oct. 17, 2025. He is survived by his sons Dan ’91 and Matt, and predeceased by his wife, Myrna, a retired professor of Chemistry at Wheaton College.
Pearson received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota before completing his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Columbia. His doctoral thesis was entitled, “Adaptive Optimal Control of Nonlinear Systems.”
Pearson joined the Brown faculty in September of 1963 and was promoted to associate professor in 1966 and full professor in 1970. A member of the electrical sciences group, his work was highly mathematical in nature, applied to practical problems in control, and used computational methods to prove the concepts. In particular, some of the areas his research focused on included linear and nonlinear system identification and/or deconvolution, stability of linear, nonlinear and time-delay systems, adaptive systems and control, control of nonlinear systems, and mathematical parameterization of systems. His research involved collaboration and interaction with the NASA/Electronics research center, the U.S. Army Natick Labs, and the Air Force Aerospace Research Laboratory, and resulted in the publication of more than 100 papers and over 90 invited talks.
Pearson’s service over the years consisted of membership in numerous professional organizations and on numerous University-related committees. His academic honors included a best paper award, Pi Tau Sigma, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and a Fulbright-Hays Award to visit for a semester at the University of Warwick in England. Pearson’s research netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money from NASA, NSF, DARPA, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Army Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General.
Aside from research, Allan taught several courses at Brown, including two of the foundational courses in engineering for first-year students - ENGN0030 and ENGN0040, and the large sophomore course ENGN0052. He was praised by both undergraduate and graduate students for his calm demeanor, thoroughness, and patience.
As a mentor, he supervised 19 master’s and 15 doctoral theses. One of his earliest master’s students was Harvey Silverman, who would go on to become Dean of the Division of Engineering.
“Allan was a wonderful friend and advisor,” said Silverman. “As his graduate student from 1966-1970, he guided me in my Ph.D. studies with bold new ideas and turned me on to powerful mathematical techniques for several areas in control systems. I first became an expert in trying to model a satellite’s control using our ‘new’ analog computer and this became a master’s degree thesis. After that he pretty much let me try to come up with my own thesis ideas and this ultimately led to my interest in digital signal processing and an early solution for system identification using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique. From this we wrote a well received paper on the new work just after I had started at IBM Research.
“Later Allan was on the committee that hired me back to Brown after CS formed here. He was a true mentor and friend and I have missed him being here after he retired. As a graduate student and when I was at IBM, Allan and Myrna hosted Judy and me and my family several times at his home in Norton. I have had the good fortune to have had five terrific mentors in my life, each of whom changed my technical life and behavior as well as set great examples on how to behave honestly and personally. Allan is at the top of the list.”