2002 Rydell ProfessorshipFeaturing Stephen Smale

Stephen SmaleStephen Smale is an American mathematician. His research concerns topology, dynamical systems and mathematical economics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and the National Medal of Science awarded in 1996. He spent more than three decades on the mathematics faculty of the University of California, Berkeley.

Smale’s publications include Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, and Linear Algebra (1974; with Morris W. Hirsch), The Mathematics of Time: Essays on Dynamical Systems, Economic Processes, and Related Topics (1980), and The Collected Papers of Stephen Smale (2000).

In addition to math, Smale's strongest interests concern learning, intelligence, and the evolution of language.

During his residency, Dr. Smale gave two public lectures. The first was titled "Creativity and Its Obstructions." This talk described how new ideas are repressed by the leaders of science and the arts. The second lecture was "What is Chaos, the New Science of Unpredictability?" Smale was a featured speaker at the college's 1990 Nobel Conference on "Chaos" theory.

In addition to giving public lectures, Smale team-taught with Thomas LoFaro, Gustavus professor of mathematics, and visited with students and faculty at Gustavus.