Stephen Smale is one of the most renowned American mathematicians of the twentieth century. Born in Flint on July 15, 1930, he went to a one-room school house in Atlas Township before attending and graduating from Grand Blanc High School in 1948. In high school, his favorite subjects were Chemistry and Physics. Following his local schooling, Stephen attended the University of Michigan. But after failing a physics course, he pivoted his attention to mathematics. He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in mathematics from Michigan.

Upon graduation, he was famous (well, within math circles) for proving the h-cobordism theorem in 1962, which is very important in the field of differential topology. The proof was viewed to be so important, Stephen Smale won the very coveted Fields Medal in 1966, considered the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. No small feat, as only about four people receive the award every four years.

He worked at the University of Chicago, followed by a long career at UC Berkely. Beginning in 1995 Stephen took a position as professor at City University of Hong Kong. From 2003 to 2012, he was a professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Following that, Smale again worked for the City University of Hong Kong as a Distinguished University Professor.

His work was not just teaching and proving theorems, but he also used his math skills in the fields of mechanics and economics. Beginning in the 1980s, his work was focused on computational mathematics. Along with that work, Stephen published many articles and wrote several books. All of this effort resulted in additional awards, including the Oswald Veblen Prize in 1966, the Chauv enet Prize of the MAA in 1988 and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 2006-07. He also was given the National Medal of Science in 1996 for Mathematics and Computer Science.

Quite the list of accomplishments for someone growing up on a rural farm and graduating in a class of about a hundred students.