Hubert Stanley Wall (December 2, 1902 – September 12, 1971[2][3]) 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.
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.[5] 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.[3][4]:235[5]
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."[4]:285 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."[3]:3
Wall had 66 doctoral students, 61 at the University of Texas.[6]
123456"In Memoriam Hubert Stanley Wall"(PDF). Memorial Resolutions and Biographical Sketches. University of Texas at Austin Faculty Council. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
