A Tribute to Dimitri Bertsekas - by Ben Recht - arg min

My teacher and friend Dimitri Bertsekas passed away earlier this month.

My teacher and friend Dimitri Bertsekas passed away earlier this month. I just learned about this over the weekend, and I’m still processing my thoughts. Dimitri was a hero of mine for so many reasons. I took my first and only class on optimization with him, and I was riveted by his clean presentation of convex analysis and mastery of the overhead projector. He took a liking to me, and I made it a point to find him for a chat whenever I’d visit MIT. He was always generous with his time and excited to exchange ideas, but he wouldn’t hesitate to harshly scold me when I’d present some result…

saved by

• Vihan Tiwari

related reading

• Distill — Latest articles about machine learningdistill.pub
• Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning · Gwern.netgwern.net
• Differentiable Programming from Scratchthenumb.at
• Elon Litman | Elements of a Vector Spaceelonlit.com
• A Theory of Deep Learning | Elements of a Vector Spaceelonlit.com
• Maybe I was too harsh on deep learning theory (three days ago) — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Keep the gradient flowingfa.bianp.net
• [2605.01172] A Theory of Generalization in Deep Learningarxiv.org
• Reinforcement Learning in Newcomblike Problemsproceedings.neurips.cc
• [2604.21691] There Will Be a Scientific Theory of Deep Learningarxiv.org
• [2403.14606] The Elements of Differentiable Programmingarxiv.org
• ML Mentorship: Some Q/A about RLevjang.com