Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis, a student of W. Gottschalk, is one of the founders of topological dynamics. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. During his long and productive career he made many major contributions to the abstract theory of topological dynamics, including his joint continuity theorem and the introduction of the enveloping semigroup. In so doing he laid the foundation for an algebraic approach to topological dynamics. Professor Ellis retired from the University of Minnesota in 1995 and was named a fellow of the AMS in 2012.