selected papers on mathematical trends in control theory. A selection of 13 papers by J. C. Maxwell H. Bateman Richard Bellman Robert Kalaba A. Hurwitz H. Nyquist H. W. Bode Balthasar van der Pol N. Minorsky L. A. Zadeh J. R. Raaazzini J. P. LaSalle V. Boltyanskii R. Gamkrelidze and L. Pontryagin