George Roger Sell

George Roger Sell (February 7, 1937 – May 29, 2015) was an American mathematician, specializing in differential equations, dynamical systems, and applications to fluid dynamics, climate modeling, control systems, and other subjects.

Biography Sell was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received in 1957 his bachelor's degree and in 1958 his M.Sc. from Marquette University and in 1962 his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan with thesis under the direction of Wilfred Kaplan and Lamberto Cesari. The mathematics department there awarded him the Sumner B. Myers Prize for the year's best doctoral dissertation submitted to the department. As a graduate student, Sell held a recurring summer job at the AC Spark Plug Division of AC Delco, working on the guidance system for Titan rockets. He was a Benjamin Peirce instructor from 1962 to 1964 at Harvard University. He was from 1964 to 1968 an assistant professor, from 1968 to 1973 an associate, and from 1973 until retirement a full professor at the University of Minnesota. From 1982 to 1987 Sell was the associate director of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. From 1984 to 1994 he was the director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center at the University of Minnesota campus.

Upon his death he was survived by his wife, six children, and several grandchildren.

Selected publications Articles "A note on the fundamental theory of ordinary differential equations," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 70 (1964): 529–535 "Almost periodic and periodic solutions of difference equations," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 72 (1966): 261–265 "Nonautonomous differential equations as dynamical systems: I and II," Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 127 (1967); I. The basic theory, 214–262 ; II. Limiting equations, 263–283 with Wayne W. Schmaedeke: "The Gronwall inequality for modified Stieltjes integrals," Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 19 (1968): 1217–1222 with L. Markus: "Control in conservative dynamical systems. Recurrence and capture in aperiodic fields," J. Differential Equations 16 (1974): 472–505. with R. J. Sacker: "Finite extensions of minimal transformation groups," Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 190 (1974): 429–458 with R. J. Sacker: "A note on Anosov diffeomorphisms," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 80 (1974): 278–280 "A remark on an example of R. A. Johnson," Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 82 (1981): 206–208 with K. R. Meyer: "Melnikov transformations, Bernoulli bundles and almost periodic perturbations," Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 314 (1989): 63–105. with J. Mallet-Paret: "Inertial manifolds for reaction-diffusion equations in higher space dimensions," J. Amer. Math. Soc. 1 (1988): 805–866. with G. Raugel: "Navier-Stokes equations on thin 3D domains I: Global attractors and global regularity of solutions," J. Amer. Math. Soc. 6 (1993): 503–568.

Books with Richard K. Miller:

with R. J. Sacker: with A. W. Naylor: with Ciprian Foiaș and Roger Temam: with Yuncheng You: