Stephen Smale (born July 15, 1930) is an American mathematician, known for his research in topology, dynamical systems and mathematical economics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966 and spent more than three decades on the mathematics faculty of the University of California, Berkeley (1960–1961 and 1964–1995), where he currently is Professor Emeritus, with research interests in algorithms, numerical analysis and global analysis. Education and career Smale was born in Flint, Michigan and entered the University of Michigan in 1948. Initially, he was a good student, placing into an honors calculus sequence taught by Bob Thrall and earning himself A's. However, his sophomore and junior years were marred with mediocre grades, mostly Bs, Cs and even an F in nuclear physics. However, with some luck, Smale was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Michigan's mathematics department. Yet again, Smale performed poorly in his first years, earning a C average as a graduate student. When the department chair, Hildebrandt, threatened to kick Smale out, he began to take his studies more seriously. Smale finally earned his PhD in 1957, under Raoul Bott, beginning his career as an instructor at the University of Chicago. Early in his career, Smale was involved in controversy over remarks he made regarding his work habits while proving the higher-dimensional Poincaré conjecture. He said that his best work had been done "on the beaches of Rio." He has been politically active in various movements in the past, such as the Free Speech movement. In 1966, having travelled to Moscow under an NSF grant to accept the Fields Medal, he held a press conference there to denounce the American position in Vietnam, Soviet intervention in Hungary and Soviet maltreatment of intellectuals. After his return to the US, he was unable to renew the grant. At one time he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1960, Smale received a Sloan Research Fellowship and was appointed to the Berkeley mathematics faculty, moving to a professorship at Columbia the following year. In 1964 he returned to a professorship at Berkeley, where he has spent the main part of his career. He became a professor emeritus at Berkeley in 1995 and took up a post as professor at the City University of Hong Kong. He also amassed over the years one of the finest private mineral collections in existence. Many of Smale's mineral specimens can