Jack Kenneth Hale was an American mathematician working primarily in the field of dynamical systems and functional differential equations.
Education
Jack Hale defended his Doctor of Philosophy thesis "On the Asymptotic Behavior of the Solutions of Systems of Differential Equations" at Purdue University under Lamberto Cesari in 1954. His undergraduate years were spent at Berea College, where he was studying Mathematics until 1949.
Career
In 1954-1957, Hale worked as a Systems Analyst at Sandia Corporation and in 1957-1958 he was a Staff Scientist at Remington Rand Univac. He became a faculty member at Brown University in 1964 and worked in the Division of Applied Mathematics for 24 years until 1988, serving as Director of the Lefschetz Center for Dynamical Systems for a number of years. In 1988 Hale moved to the School of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he co-founded the Center for Dynamical Systems and Nonlinear Studies (CDSNS), serving as the Director of the CDSNS from 1989-1998.
In 1964, together with Joseph LaSalle, Hale became the founding editor of the Journal of Differential Equations, of which he was later Chief Editor.
Throughout his career, Hale published 15 books, over 200 research papers, and supervised 48 Doctor of Philosophy students. The biennial Jack K. Hale Award was established in 2013 by Elsevier with the aim of distinguishing researchers who have made outstanding contributions in the fields of dynamics and differential equations.
Membership
During 1958-1964, he was a permanent member of the Research Institute for Advanced Studies (Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor) in Baltimore, Maryland. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Corresponding Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.