-- At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, in the college's F.W. Olin Hall 104, Smale will present a lecture titled "Creativity and Its Obstructions." This talk will describe how new ideas are repressed by the leaders of science and the arts.
-- At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 6, again in F.W. Olin Hall 104, Smale will present "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 will team-teach with Thomas LoFaro, Gustavus assistant professor of mathematics, and visit with students and faculty at Gustavus. A long-time college mathematics professor, Smale has held teaching and research appointments at various institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley from 1964-1994. Smale's many honors include a Fields Medal awarded in 1966 and the National Medal of Science awarded in 1996. In addition to math, Smale's strongest interests concern learning, intelligence, and the evolution of language.
Smale joins other highly regarded scientists, such as Philip Anderson, Susan Coppersmith, Freeman Dyson, Margaret Geller, Philip Morrison, and historian Lawrence Levine, as visiting Rydell professors.
The Rydell visiting professorship at Gustavus was established in 1995 by Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell of Minnetonka to give students the opportunity to learn from and interact with leading scholars.
Gustavus Adolphus College is a private liberal arts college in St. Peter, Minn., that prepares 2,500 undergraduates for lives of leadership, service, and lifelong learning. The oldest Lutheran college in Minnesota, Gustavus was founded in 1862 by Swedish immigrants and named for Swedish King Gustav II Adolf. At Gustavus, students receive personal attention in small-sized classes and engage in collaborative research with their professors. Fully accredited and known for its strong science, writing, music, athletics, study-abroad, and service-learning programs, Gustavus hosts a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and is internationally recognized for its annual Nobel Conference.
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