Hedlund, G. A.

Gustav Arnold Hedlund (1904-1993) was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. Hedlund is known as one of the founders of symbolic and topological dynamics.

Hedlund received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1925, his master’s degree from Columbia University in 1928, his Ph.D in 1930 from Harvard, where his advisor was Marston Morse, and was bestowed with an honorary master’s degree from Yale University in 1948. His teaching appointments included Bryn Mawr, the University of Virginia, and Yale University (1948-1972), his longest appointment, where he was the Philip Schuyler Beebee Professor of Mathematics from 1949 until his retirement in 1972; he chaired the Mathematics Department 1949-1959. Hedlund was a fellow at Yale's Branford College and, after his retirement had a visiting professorship at Wesleyan University. In addition to these appointments, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (1933-1934, 1938-1939, 1953-1954).