astronomy

Hubert Stanley Wall

Hubert Stanley Wall is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hubert Stanley Wall rather than just read about it. In short: Hubert Stanley Wall (December 2, 1902 – September 12, 1971) was an American mathematician who worked primarily in the field of continued fractions. He is also known as one of the leading proponents of the Moore method of teaching.

Key takeaways

Hubert Stanley Wall belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hubert Stanley Wall to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hubert Stanley Wall from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hubert Stanley Wall (December 2, 1902 – September 12, 1971) was an American mathematician who worked primarily in the field of continued fractions. He is also known as one of the leading proponents of the Moore method of teaching.

Early life and education Hubert Stanley Wall was born in Rockwell City, Iowa on December 2, 1902. He received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa in 1924. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin (now University of Wisconsin–Madison) in 1927. He married Mary Kate Parker, a lawyer and Texas assistant Attorney General. Her specialty was election law.

Career Upon receiving his Ph.D. Wall joined the faculty at Northwestern University and stayed until 1944 except for the academic year 1938–1939 when he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. He then went to the Illinois Institute of Technology for two years before moving in 1946 to the University of Texas where he spent the rest of his career. He became an emeritus professor in 1970. Most of Wall's mathematical research was in various aspects of the analytic theory of continued fractions. This included the theory of positive-definite continued fractions, convergence results for continued fractions, parabola theorems, Hausdorff moments, and Hausdorff summability. He studied the polynomials now named Wall polynomials after him. While at Northwestern he started a collaboration with Ernst Hellinger, and he was very interested in Hellinger integrals throughout his career, but did publish anything on them. While at Texas Wall was a prominent practitioner of the Moore method of teaching. John Parker wrote, "Wall had long ago thrown himself wholeheartedly into the Moore tradition, with his own interpretation of the Moore method, and there was a good deal of cross pollination of students through their courses, some steered to the PhD by Moore and others by Wall and Hyman J. Ettlinger. Between them, they continued to dominate PhD guidance in Pure Mathematics throughout the 1950s and 1960s." The University of Texas memorial to Wall suggests that he may have picked up some of these ideas at Northwestern from Van Vleck and Hellinger and says, "Since there were already people on the Texas faculty who had used innovative techniques (chiefly Robert Lee Moore and some of his colleagues), Wall tried their methods. For him and for his students it was an unqualified success." Wall had 66 doctoral students, 61 at the University of Texas. Wall died in Austin, Texas, on September 12, 1971.

Selected publications Wall, H. S. (2000) [1948]. Analytic Theory of Continued Fractions. Providence: American Mathematical Society. ISBN 978-0-8218-2106-0. OCLC 43311799. Wall, H. S. (1969) [1963]. Creative Mathematics. Univ of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-71039-9.

Notes

External links Hubert Stanley Wall at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hubert Stanley Wall

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hubert Stanley Wall claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hubert Stanley Wall before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hubert Stanley Wall ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hubert Stanley Wall

In research: Hubert Stanley Wall appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hubert Stanley Wall in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hubert Stanley Wall is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1902 births, 1971 deaths, 20th-century American mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hubert Stanley Wall outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hubert Stanley Wall in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hubert Stanley Wall means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hubert Stanley Wall out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hubert Stanley Wall in simple terms?

Why does Hubert Stanley Wall matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hubert Stanley Wall?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hubert Stanley Wall.