Walter Gottschalk

Walter Helbig Gottschalk ( born November 3, 1918 in Lynchburg, Virginia; † 15 February 2004 in Providence, Rhode Iceland ) was an American mathematician who dealt with topological dynamics.

Gottschalk was the son of a German immigrant who owned a small shop, and grew up in Salem. He studied at the University of Virginia with a bachelor 's degree in 1939, her Master's degree in 1942 and his doctorate in 1944 Gustav Hedlund ( An Investigation of Continuous Mappings with Almost Periodic Properties ) After that, he was instructor and later professor at the University of Pennsylvania, on the mathematics faculty until 1958 he presided in 1955. In 1963 he became a professor at Wesleyan University, where he chaired from 1964 to 1969 and 1970/71 the mathematics faculty and emeritus in 1982.

He is known for his monograph with Hedlund on topological dynamics that this field of research with reasoned. In 1951, he gave a new proof of the graph coloring set of Paul Erdős and Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn ( every infinite graph is with k colors colorable if that applies to all its finite subgraphs ) in 1973 resulted in a (defined by cellular automata ) surjunktive groups.

1947/48 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. 1960/61, he conducted research at Yale University. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was married in 1952 and had two children. He made also mathematical sculptures ( polyhedra ) and exhibited them (Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1963, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, 1965).

His younger brother, Carl (1922-1997) was a physician, a nephrologist and professor at the University of North Carolina.

Writings

• With Gustav Hedlund: Topological Dynamics. AMS Colloquium Publications, 1955