Education
Born in Bricelyn, Minnesota, Hestenes earned his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1932 under Gilbert Bliss.
Born in Bricelyn, Minnesota, Hestenes earned his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1932 under Gilbert Bliss.
Together with Cornelius Lanczos and Eduard Stiefel, he invented the conjugate gradient method. His dissertation was titled "Sufficient Conditions for the General Problem of Mayer with Variable End-Points." After teaching as an associate professor at Chicago, in 1947 he moved to a professorship at University of California, Los Los Angeles He continued there until his retirement in 1973, and during that time he served as department chair from 1950-1958. While a professor, Hestenes supervised the thesis research of 34 students, among them Glen Culler, Richard Tapia and Jesse Wilkins, Junior.
He died on May 31, 1991 in Los Angeles, California.