Automorphisms and Equivalence Relations in Topological Dynamics

David B. Ellis received his PhD in algebraic topology from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at a wide variety of institutions including Yale University, Vassar College, and Washington University in St Louis, and is currently a member of the faculty at Beloit College in Wisconsin. He has published papers in algebraic topology, foliations, fractal geometry and topological dynamics.

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.