Welington de Melo

Welington Celso de Melo (17 November 1946 – 21 December 2016) was a Brazilian mathematician. Known for his contributions to dynamical systems theory, he served as full professor at Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada from 1980 to 2016. Melo wrote numerous papers, one being a complete description of the topological behavior of 1-dimensional real dynamical systems (co-authored with Marco Martens and Sebastian van Strien).[1] He proved the global hyperbolicity of renormalization for Cr unimodal maps (co-authored with Alberto Pinto and Edson de Faria).[2] He was a recipient of the 2003 TWAS Prize.[3]

Welington de Melo
Melo in 1973
Born(1946-11-17)17 November 1946
Guapé, Minas Gerais
Died21 December 2016(2016-12-21) (aged 70)
NationalityBrazilian
Alma materInstituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada
Known forContributions to dynamical systems theory
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsInstituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (1974–2016)
ThesisStructural Stability of Diffeomorphisms on Two-Manifolds (1973)
Doctoral advisorJacob Palis
Doctoral studentsArtur Avila

Biography

Born on November 17, 1946, in Guapé, Minas Gerais, Welington studied electrical engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (1969). He adopted mathematics after attending a course in the researcher of the Elon Lages Lima Institute in a colloquium in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais. Invited by Elon to study at Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada he moved to Rio de Janeiro with his wife Gilza in 1970, with Jacob Palis his advisor, where Welington completed his doctorate in two years, with a thesis published in the prestigious Inventiones Mathematicae in 1972. He did his post-doctorate in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. He returned two years later to Brazil to make a career as a researcher at IMPA, where he stayed ever since.[4]

Appreciated by different generations of mathematicians, Welington was known and respected for his academic rigor and scientific productivity. Besides mathematics, he was passionate about sailing. On 1987 Steve Smale, Charles Pugh and Welington sailed the Pacific in a long journey on Smale's 43-foot Stardust.[5] On his 30-foot Doisdu boat, he sailed at least a hundred days a year, mostly along Angra dos Reis's coast. He interpreted the wind with mastery, a phenomenon that can be modeled by dynamic systems, his mathematical specialty. He was proud to have taken on board the Doisdu six Fields medalists and many friends of IMPA.

He died on December 21, 2016, at age 70, of complications of a heart attack.[6]

Awards and honors

References
  1. Martens, M.; De Melo, W.; Van Strien, S. (1992), "Julia-Fatou-Sullivan theory for real one-dimensional dynamics", Acta Mathematica, 168 (1): 273–318, doi:10.1007/BF02392981.
  2. Faria, E.; De Melo, W.; Pinto, A. (2006), "Global hyperbolicity of renormalization for Cr unimodal maps", Annals of Mathematics, 164: 731–824, arXiv:math/0702851, doi:10.4007/annals.2006.164.731, S2CID 119144004.
  3. "Prizes and Awards". The World Academy of Sciences. 2016.
  4. "Morre Welington de Melo, pesquisador do IMPA que fazia matemática até velejando". Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada. 2016.
  5. Batterson, Steve, 1950- (2000). Stephen Smale : the mathematician who broke the dimension barrier. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 0-8218-2045-1. OCLC 41662613.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. "Morre o matemático Welington de Melo, orientador do medalha Fields". O Globo.
  7. "Welington Celso de Melo – ABC" (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2020-03-01.
  8. De Melo, W. (1998). "Rigidity and renormalization in one dimensional dynamical systems". Doc. Math. (Bielefeld) Extra Vol. ICM Berlin, 1998, vol. II. pp. 765–778.


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