On Maurício M. Peixoto and the arrival of Structural Stability to Rio de Janeiro, 1955

Abstract

This essay is a historical exploration of the circumstances, and subsequent mathematical consequences, of the encounter, in 1955, of Maurício M. Peixoto (1921 - 2019) with the work of Henry F. DeBaggis (1916 - 2002) on Structural Stability, Princeton 1952, developing a notion introduced by Alexander A. Andronov and Lev S. Pontrjagin, Gorkii 1937.