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Asia PacificMathematics NewsletterJanuary 2011 Volume 1 Number 1

S. S. Chern and Hua LuogengInterview: Terence Tao

Escher’s Impossible World Origamics for Students

Tony F ChanHong Kong University of Science and TechnologyHong [email protected]

Louis ChenInstitute for Mathematical Sciences National University of Singapore [email protected]

Chi Tat Chong Department of MathematicsNational University of [email protected]

Kenji FukayaDepartment of MathematicsKyoto [email protected]

Peter HallDepartment of Mathematics and StatisticsThe University of Melbourne, [email protected]

Sze-Bi HsuDepartment of MathematicsNational Tsing Hua [email protected]

Michio JimboRikkyo University [email protected]

Dohan KimDepartment of MathematicsSeoul National UniversitySouth [email protected]

Peng Yee Lee Mathematics and Mathematics EducationNational Institute of EducationNanyang Technological [email protected]

Ryo Chou1-34-8 Taito Taitou Mathematical Society [email protected]

Fuzhou GongBeijing Scientific University Department of MathematicsZhongguan Village East Road No.55 Beijing 100190, [email protected]

Le Tuan HoaInstitute of Mathematics, VAST18 Hoang Quoc Road10307 HanoiVietnam [email protected]

Derek HoltonUniversity of Otaga, New Zealand, &University of Melbourne, Australia605/228 The AvenueParkville, VIC [email protected]

Chang-Ock LeeDepartment of Mathematical SciencesKAIST, Daejeon 305-701, South [email protected]

Yu Kiang LeongDepartment of Mathematics National University of Singapore S17-08-06 Singapore [email protected]

Zhiming MaAcademy of Math and Systems ScienceInstitute of Applied Mathematics, [email protected]

Charles SempleDepartment of Mathematics and Statistics University of Canterbury New Zealand [email protected]

Tang Tao Department of MathematicsThe Hong Kong Baptist UniversityHong [email protected]

Spenta WadiaDepartment of Theoretical PhysicsTata Institute of Fundamental Research [email protected]

Advisory Board

Editorial Board

Ramdorai SujathaSchool of MathematicsTata Institute of Fundamental Research Homi Bhabha Road, Colaba Mumbai 400005, India [email protected]

Jenn-Nan Wang Department of MathematicsNational Taiwan UniversityTaipei 106, [email protected]

Chengbo Zhu Department of Mathematics National University of Singapore 2 Science Drive 2 Singapore [email protected]

Editorial

Spatial Realization of Escher’s Impossible World ........................................................................................ 1

On the Teaching of Geometry in Russia ............................................................................................................... 6

Let’s Fold a Triangular Prism from A4 Paper and Enjoy Origamics! ......................................13

Industrial Mathematics: “On the Crest of a Wave” ..................................................................................16

Industrial Mathematics: Here and Now... Positive in All Directions .....................................18

An Interview with Terence Tao ....................................................................................................................................23

Hua Luogeng and I ..................................................................................................................................................................27

Problem Corner ...........................................................................................................................................................................29

Chern Institute of Mathematics .................................................................................................................................30

TIFR and IIT Bombay Sign MoU to Setup The National Centre for Mathematics .................................................................................................................31

Beijing International Centre for Mathematical Research ................................................................32

International Congress of Mathematicians 2010 ....................................................................................33

International Congress of Women Mathematicians 2010 .............................................................37

International Congress of Mathematicians 2014 ....................................................................................39

Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians 2010 ...............................................41

Tenth Anniversary of NUS Institute for Mathematical Sciences ..............................................43

Joint Meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society and the Korean Mathematical Society ...........................................................................................................................44

Mathematical Community Commemorates the Centennial of the Birth of Hua Luogeng .................................................................................................................................................45

China Won the 51st International Mathematical Olympiad ........................................................46

Louis Nirenberg, First Recipient of the Chern Medal ..........................................................................47

News in Asia Pacific Region ............................................................................................................................................48

Conferences in Asia Pacific Region .........................................................................................................................55

Mathematical Societies in Asia Pacific Region ...........................................................................................61

January 2011

Asia PacificMathematics Newsletter

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Published byWorld Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224http://www.asiapacific-mathnews.com/

Volume 1 Number 1

ISSN 2010-3492

EditorialWelcome to the Inaugural Issue!

We are pleased to welcome you to the first issue of Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter (APMN). Initially the Newsletter will be published

quarterly with approximately 50-60 pages per issue. It is hoped that it will eventually become a bimonthly publication. The format for dissemination will be a combination of print and electronic versions, and it will be available online with a limited number of printed copies for circulation. A softcopy of the Newsletter will be sent by email to mathematicians in the region based on our extensive mailing list.

In view of the significant role played by mathematicians from the Asia Pacific region in terms of research and education, the time is ripe to provide a common platform to facilitate interaction, collaboration and cooperation among mathematicians in this region. Currently, the regional body Southeast Asian Mathematical Society (SEAMS) caters mainly to Southeast Asian countries, but not to countries such as Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, etc. With the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) 2010 successfully held in Hyderabad, India, and the next ICM to be hosted by Korea in 2014, perhaps the time is ripe for mathematicians in the Asia Pacific region to think seriously about forming an organization which can function in a similar way as the European Mathematical Society. It is our hope that this Newsletter would play a stimulating role in the formation of a such an umbrella organization (Asia Pacific Mathematical Society?) in the near future. It is very important to keep mathematicians informed and connected on what is happening in our community. We hope that this Newsletter will provide such a meaningful forum and promote the development of all aspects of mathematics in this region, and in particular, of activities that transcend national frontiers.

In each issue of APMN we plan to include articles of an expository nature on topics of interest to the mathematical community, feature articles on well-known centres or institutes of mathematics in the region; profiles of eminent mathematicians; views on mathematics education; information on career openings such as academic and postdoctoral positions, grants and research opportunities, and news items from various mathematical societies. We also hope to carry regular book reviews and a problem corner. For book reviews, we need the support of publishers to send us their recently published books for listing and reviewing.

A newsletter needs up-to-date news items. If you happen to

come across any recent information that may be of general interest, please send the item to us. Ideally, we would like to have each national society in the region appoint one contact person who could send us news about his or her society’s activities. Some societies have done so and we hope that other societies will follow suit.

We are extremely grateful to the cooperation of some national mathematical organizations for granting us permission to translate and reproduce articles from their publications. For the benefit of the mathematical community in the region, we will “recycle” interesting articles published in fraternal but perhaps less accessible newsletters and bulletins, and have them translated if necessary. In this issue, we are fortunate to receive a few articles which are written specifically for this Newsletter. Readers are encouraged to contact any of the editors if they have any suggestions for a possible feature article or an interview that may be of interest. Also please let us know if you have someone in mind who could be a potential contributor of an article.

The success of this Newsletter will depend very much on the efforts and cooperation of individual scholars and researchers as well as the various national mathematical societies, centres and research institutes in this region. This Newsletter is meant for you, and should reflect the things you think are important. Your input is vital and please feel free to send us your feedback and suggestions for future issues. Do contact us at [email protected].

The production of a newsletter like this one is, of course, a collaborative task. It could not have been done without a helpful and enthusiastic editorial board. We have to thank all members of the editorial team for their initiative and contribution. Particular thanks go to the Gazette, newsletter of the Australian Mathematical Society; and the Mathematical Communications（数学通讯）of the Chinese Mathematical Society. We would also like to thank Professor Elias A. Lipitakis, editor of the Proceedings of the 8th Hellenic-European Conference on Computer Mathematics for his kind permission to reprint a paper from the proceedings.

Happy reading.

Spatial Realization of Escher’s Impossible WorldKokichi Sugihara

Abstract— M. C. Escher, a Dutch artist, created a series oflithographs presenting “impossible” objects and “impossible”motions. Although they are usually called “impossible”, someof them can be realized as solid objects and physical motions inthe three-dimensional space. The basic idea for these realizationsis to use the degrees of freedom in the reconstruction of solidsfrom pictures. First, the set of all solids represented by a givenpicture is represented by a system of linear equations andinequalities. Next the distribution of the freedom is characterizedby a matroid extracted from this system. Then, a robust methodfor reconstructing solids is constructed and applied to the spatialrealization of the “impossible” world.

I. INTRODUCTION

There is a class of pictures called “anomalous pictures” or“pictures of impossible objects”. These pictures generate opticalillusion; when we see them, we have impressions of three-dimensional object structures, but at the same time we feel thatsuch objects are not realizable. The Penrose triangle [13] is oneof the oldest such pictures. Since the discovery of this triangle,many pictures belonging to this class have been discovered andstudied in the field of visual psychology [9], [14].

The pictures of impossible objects have also been studiedfrom a mathematical point of view. One of the pioneers isHuffman, who characterized impossible objects from a viewpointof computer interpretation of line drawings [10]. Clowes [2] alsoproposed a similar idea in a different manner. Cowan [3], [4] andTerouanne [20] characterized a class of impossible objects thatare topologically equivalent to a torus. Draper studied picturesof impossible object through the gradient space [6]. Sugiharaclassified pictures of impossible objects according to his algorithmfor interpretation of line drawings [15], [16].

Impossible objects have also been used as material for artisticwork by many artists. One of the most famous examples is theendless loop of stairs drawn by Dutch artist M. C. Escher inhis work titled “Klimmen en dalen (Ascending and descending)”[8]. Other examples include painting by Mitsumasa Anno [1] anddrawings by Sandro del Prete [7], to mention a few.

Those activities are stories about two-dimensional pictures. Onthe other hand, several tricks have also been found for realizationof impossible objects as actual three-dimensional structures. Thefirst trick is to use curved surfaces for faces that look planar;Mathieu Hamaekers generated the Penrose triangle by this trick[7]. The second trick is to generate hidden gaps in depth; ShigeoFukuda used this trick and generated a solid model of Escher’s“Waterfall” [7].

In this paper, we point out that some “impossible” objects canbe realized as three-dimensional solids even if those tricks are notemployed; in other words, “impossible” objects can be realizedunder the conditions that faces are made by planar (non-curved)polygons and that object parts are actually connected wheneverthey look connected in the picture plane. For example, Escher’s

K. Sugihara is with the University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.

endless loop of stairs can be realized as a solid model, as shown inFig. 1 [17], [18]. We call this trick the “non-rectangularity trick”,because those solid objects have non-rectangular face angles thatlook rectangular.

(a) (b)

(c)

Fig. 1. Three-dimensional realization of Escher’s endless loop of stairs: (a)ordinary picture; (b) picture of an impossible object; (c) solid model realizedfrom the picture in (b).

The resulting solid models can generate optical illusions in thesense that although we are looking at actual objects, we feel thatthose objects can not exist. In all of those three tricks, we needto see the objects from a unique special point of view. Hencethe illusion disappears if we move our eye positions. However,the non-rectangularity trick is less sensitive to the eye position,because the objects are made in such a way that faces that lookplanar are actually planar, and the parts that look connected areactually connected.

The non-rectangularity trick can also be used to generate a newclass of visual illusion called “impossible” physical motions. Thebasic idea is as follows. Instead of pictures of impossible objects,we choose pictures of ordinary objects around us, and reconstructsolid models from these pictures using the non-rectangularitytrick. The resulting solid models are unusual in their shapesalthough they look ordinary. Because of this gap between theperceived shape and the actual shape, we can add actual physical

January 2011, Volume 1 No 1 1

Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter

motions that look like impossible.The artist closest to the present work is M. C. Escher. Actu-

ally, he created many beautiful and interesting lithographs withmathematical flavor. Among many others, his works contain twogroups; one is related to periodic tilings and the other is related topictures of impossible objects. The former group, works based onperiodic tilings, has been studied from a computational point ofview by many scientists [5]; Recently, in particular, Kaplan andSalesin constructed a method called “Escherization” for designingEscher-like pictures based on tilings [11], [12].

From the viewpoint of computer-aided approach to Escher, thepresent paper is an attack on the other group, impossible objectsand impossible motions. Actually, we represent a method forconstructing three-dimensional solid objects and physical motionsrepresented in Escher’s lithographs. In this sense, what we are de-scribing in this paper might be called “Three-Dimensionalizationof the Escher World”.

The organization of the paper is as follows. In Section II, wereview the basic method for judging the realizability of a solidfrom a given picture, and in Section III, we review the robustmethod for reconstructing objects from pictures. In Section IV,we study how the degrees of freedom for reconstructing thesolids are distributed in the picture. We show examples of thethree dimensional realization of impossible objects and impossiblemotions in Section V and give conclusions in Section VI.

II. FREEDOM IN THE BACK-PROJECTION

In this section we briefly review the algebraic structure ofthe freedom in the choice of the polyhedron represented by apicture [16]. This gives the basic tool with which we constructour algorithm for designing impossible motions.

As shown in Fig. 2, suppose that an Cartesian co-ordinate system is fixed in the three-dimensional space, and agiven polyhedral object is projected by the central projectionwith respect to the center at the origin onto thepicture plane . Let the resulting picture be denoted by . Ifthe polyhedron is given, the associated picture is uniquelydetermined. On the other hand, if the picture is given, theassociated polyhedron is not unique; there is large freedom in thechoice of the polyhedron whose projection coincides with . Thealgebraic structure of the degree of freedom can be formulated inthe following way.

Fig. 2. Solid and its central projection.

For a given polyhedron , let be the setof all the vertices of , be the set of allthe faces of , and be the set of all pairs of vertices

and faces such that is on . We call thetriple the incidence structure of .

Let be the coordinates of the vertex , andlet

(1)

be the equation of the plane containing the face . Thecentral projection of the vertex onto the pictureplane is given by

(2)

Suppose that we are given the picture and the incidencestructure , but we do not know the exact shape of

. Then, the coordinates of the projected vertices and aregiven constants, while and

are unknown variables. Let us define

(3)

Then, we get

(4)

Assume that . Then, the vertex is on the face, and hence

(5)

should be satisfied. Substituting (4), we get

(6)

which is linear in the unknowns and because andare known constants.Collecting the equations of the form (6) for all ,

we get the system of linear equations, which we denote by

(7)

where is the vector ofunknown variables and is a constant matrix.

The picture also gives us information about the relative depthbetween a vertex and a face. Suppose that a visible face hidesa vertex . Then, is nearer to the origin than , and hencewe get

(8)

If the vector is nearer than the face , then we get

(9)

Collecting all of such inequalities, we get a system of linearinequalities, which we denote by

(10)

where is a constant matrix.The linear constraints (7) and (10) specify the set of all possible

polyhedron represented by the given picture . In other words,the set of all ’s that satisfy the equations (7) and the inequalities(10) represents the set of all possible polyhedrons represented by

. Actually the next theorem holds.

Theorem 1. [16]. Picture represents a polyhedron if and onlyif the system of linear equations (7) and inequalities (10) has asolution.

Hence, to reconstruct a polyhedron from a given picture isequivalent to choose a vector that satisfies (7) and (10). (Referto [16] for the formal procedure for collecting the equation (7)and the inequalities (10) and for the proof of this theorems.)

January 2011, Volume 1 No 12


III. ROBUST RECONSTRUCTION OF OBJECTS

As seen in the last section, we can characterize the set ofall polyhedra represented by a given picture in terms of linearconstraints. However, these constraints are too strict if we wantto apply them to actual reconstruction procedure. This can beunderstood by the next example.

Consider the picture shown in Figure 3(a). We, human beings,can easily interpret this picture as a truncated pyramid seen fromabove. However, if we search by a computer for the vectors thatsatisfy the constraints (7) and (10), the computer usually judgesthat the constraints (7) and (10) are not satisfiable and hence thepicture in Figure 3(a) does not represent any polyhedron.

(a) (b)

Fig. 3. Picture of a truncated pyramid: (a) a picture which we can easilyinterpret as a truncated pyramid; (b) incorrectness of the picture due to lackof the common point of intersection of the three side edges that should bethe apex of the pyramid.

This judgment is mathematically correct because of the follow-ing reason.

Suppose that Figure 3(a) represents a truncated pyramid. Then,its three side faces should have a common point of intersectionat the apex of the pyramid when they are extended. Since thisapex is also on the common edge of two side faces, it is alsothe common point of intersection of the three side edges ofthe truncated pyramid. However, as shown by the broken linesin Figure 3(b), the three side edges does not meet at a cornerpoint. Therefore, this picture is not a projection of any truncatedpyramid. The truncated pyramid can be reconstructed only whenwe use curved faces instead of planar faces.By this example, we can understand that the satisfiability of

the constraints (7) and (10) is not a practical solution of theproblem of judging the reconstructability of polyhedra from apicture. Indeed, digitization errors cannot be avoided when thepictures are represented in a computer, and hence the picture ofa truncated pyramid becomes almost always incorrect even if wecarefully draw it in such a way that the three side edges meet ata common point.

This kind of superstrictness of the constraints comes fromredundancy of the set of linear equations. Actually, if the verticesof the truncated pyramid were placed at strictly correct positionsin the picture plane, the associated coefficient matrix is not offull rank. If those vertices contain digitization errors, the rank ofthe matrix increases and consequently the set of constraints (7)and (10) becomes infeasible.

So in order to make a robust method for judging the recon-structability of polyhedra, we have to remove redundant equationsfrom (10). For this purpose, the next theorem is helpful. Supposethat we are given a picture with the incidence structure

. For subset , let us define

(11)(12)

that is, denotes the set of vertices that are on at leastone face in , and denotes the set of incidence pairs

such that . For any finite set , let denote thenumber of elements in . Then the next theorem holds.

Theorem 2 [16]. The associated set of equations (10) isnonredundant if and only if

(13)

for any subset such that .

Refer to [Sugihara 1986] for the strict meaning of “nonredun-dant” and for the proof.For example, the picture in Figure 3(a) has 6 vertices and five

faces (including the rear face) and hence . On theother hand, this picture has 2 triangular faces and 3 quadrilateralfaces, and hence has incidencepairs in total. Therefore, the inequality (13) is not satisfied andconsequently we can judge that the associated equations areredundant. Theorem 2 also tells us that if we remove any oneequation from (10), the resulting equation becomes nonredundant.

In this way, we can use this theorem to judge whether thegiven incidence structure generates redundant equations, and alsoto remove redundancy if redundant.

Using Theorems 1 and 2, we can design a robust method forreconstructing a polyhedron from a given picture in the followingway.Suppose that we are given a picture. We first construct the

equations (7) and the inequalities (10). Next, using Theorem 2,we judge whether (7) is redundant, and if redundant, we removeequations one by one until they become nonredundant. Let theresulting equations be denoted by

(14)

where is a submatrix of obtained by removing the rowscorresponding to redundant equations. Finally, we judge whetherthe system of (10) and (14) has solutions. If it has, we canreconstruct the solid model corresponding to an arbitrary one ofthe solutions. If it does not, we judge that the picture does notrepresent any polyhedron.

With the help of this procedure, Sugihara found that actual solidmodels can be reconstructed from some of pictures of impossibleobjects [17], [18].

IV. DISTRIBUTION OF THE DEGREES OF FREEDOM

Let us concentrate on the solutions of eq. (7). This system ofequations contains unknown variables, whereas the num-ber of essentially different equations is represented by rank .Hence, the degrees of freedom in the choice of eq. (7) can berepresented by

rank (15)

This number can also be interpreted as the degrees of freedomin the choice of the solid from the picture, because differentsolutions of eq. (7) correspond to different solids represented bythe picture. Now, we are interested in how the degrees of freedom



are distributed; in other words, we want to know how freely wecan deform each part of the solid from an ordinary shape.

We rewrite the vectorof unknowns as . Let

denote the set of all unknowns, that is,. For each

, let be the -dimensional row vector whose thcomponent is 1 and all the other components are 0’s. Then, fora real number , the equation

represents the constraints that the value of the unknown isfixed to .

For any subset , let denote thematrix obtained by adding the row vectors in tothe matrix , and we define as

rank rank (16)

represents the maximum number of unknowns in whosevalues can be fixed arbitrarily and still can construct the solutionof eq. (7). Hence, the value can be interpreted as the degreesof freedom of the subset of the unknowns.From the definition, is a rank function of a matroid; indeed

is the matroid obtained from the linear matroid consistingof all the row vectors in the matrix bythe contraction with respect to the row vectors in [21]. Thismatroid characterizes the distribution of the degrees of freedomin the choice of a solid represented by a given picture. Hence, thismatroid gives us information about how freely we can deform asolid from its natural shape so that we can add physical motionsthat look impossible [19], as we will see by examples in the nextsection.

V. EXAMPLES

The first examples of the realization of the impossible objectshown in Fig. 1(c) was constructed in the following manner.First, we construct the system of equations (7) for the picturein Fig. 1(b), then, removed redundant equations using Theorem2 and got a non-redundant system (14) of equations. Next, wegot a solution of eq. (14), which represents a specific shape ofthe three-dimensional solid. Finally, we computed the figure ofan unfolded surfaces of this solid, and made the paper model byhands.Fig. 4 shows another view of this solid. As we can understand

from this figure, some of the steps of the endless stair are nothorizontal, which makes it possible to connected the steps intoan endless loop.

Fig. 5(a) shows another example of an impossible objectconstructed in a similar manner. In this object, the near-farrelations of the poles seem inconsistent; some poles are nearerthan others on the floor while they are farther at the ceiling.This inconsistent structure is essentially similar to that representedby Escher’s lithograph “Belvedere” in 1958. Fig. 5(b) shows thesame solid seen from a different direction.

Next, let us consider “impossible” physical motions. A typ-ical example of impossible motions is represented in Escher’slithograph “Waterval” in 1961, in which water is running uphillthrough the water path and is falling down at the waterfall, andis running uphill again. This motion is really impossible because

Fig. 4. Endless loop of stairs shown in Fig. 1(c) seen from a differentviewpoint.

(a) (b)

Fig. 5. “Impossible” columns: (a) shows an impossible structure which issimilar to Escher’s lithograph “Belvedere”; (b) shows another view of thesame solid.

otherwise an eternal engine could be obtained but that contradictsthe physical law.

However, this impossible motion is realizable partially in thesense that material looks running uphill a slope. An example ofthis impossible motion is shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 6(a) shows a solidconsisting of three slopes, all of which go down from the right tothe left. If we put a ball on the left edge of the leftmost slope, asshown in Fig. 6(a), the ball moves climbing up the three slopesfrom the left to the right one by one; thus the ball admits animpossible motion.

(a) (b)

Fig. 6. Impossible motion of a ball along “Antigravity Three Slopes”: (a) aball climbing up the slopes; (b) another view of the same situation.

The actual shape of this solid can be understood if we seeFig. 6(b), which is the photograph of the same solid as in Fig. 6(a)seen from another direction. From this figure, we can see thatactually the ball is just rolling down the slopes according to thenatural properties of the ball and the slopes.Still another example is shown in Figure 7. In this figure, there

are two windows that look connected in a usual manner but a



straight bar passes through them in an unusual way.

(a) (b)

Fig. 7. “Distorted Windows”: (a) a straight bar passing throw the twowindows in an unusual manner; (b) another view.

VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have presented a method for creating “impossible” objectsand “impossible” motions. In this method, the design of a solidadmitting impossible objects and motions is formulated as asearch for feasible solutions of a system of linear equations andinequalities. The resulting method enables us to realize Escher’simpossible world in the three-dimensional space.

The impossible objects and motions obtained by this methodcan offer a new type of optical illusion. When we see these objectsand motions, we have a strange impression in the sense that wefeel they are impossible although we are actually seeing them.Hence it is one of our future work to study this type of opticalillusion from a view point of visual psychology.

Other future problems include (1) collecting other variants ofimpossible objects and motions created by the present method,and (2) formulating the objective functions for selecting optimalshapes among all the solids specified by the distribution of thedegrees of freedom.

REFERENCES

[1] M. Anno, Book of ABC (in Japanese), Fukuinkan-Shoten, Tokyo, 1974.[2] M. B. Clowes, “On seeing things,” Artificial Intelligence, vol. 2, pp. 79–

116, 1971.[3] T. M. Cowan, “The theory of braids and the analysis of impossible

figures,” Journal of Mathematical Psychology, vol. 11, pp. 190–212,1974.

[4] T. M. Cowan, “Organizing the properties of impossible figures,” Percep-tion, vol. 6, pp. 41–56, 1977.

[5] H. S. M. Coxeter, M. Emmer, R. Penrose and M. L. Teuber, M. C. Escher— Art and Science, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1986.

[6] S. W. Draper, “The Penrose triangle and a family of related figures,”Perception, vol. 7, pp. 283–296, 1978.

[7] B. Ernst, The Eye Beguiled, Benedict Taschen Verlag GmbH, Koln, 1992.[8] M. C. Escher, Evergreen, Benedict Taschen Verlag GmbH, Koln”, 1993.[9] R. L. Gregory, The Intelligent Eye, third edition, Weiderfeld and Nicol-

son, London, 1971.[10] D. A. Huffman, “Impossible objects as nonsense sentences,” In Machine

Entelligence, B. Metzer and D. Michie (eds.), vol. 6, Edinburgh Univer-sity Press, 1971.

[11] C. S. Kaplan and D. H. Salesin, “Escherization,” Proceedings of ACMSIGGRAPH 2000, ACM Press, New York, pp. 499–510, 2000.

[12] C. S. Kaplan and D. H. Salesin, “Dihedral Escherization,” Proceedingsof Graphics Interface 2004, pp. 255–262, 2004.

[13] L. S. Penrose and R. Penrose, “Impossible objects — A special type ofvisual illusion,” British Journal of Psychology, vol. 49, pp. 31–33, 1958.

[14] J. O. Robinson, The Psychology of Visual Illusion, Hutchinson, London,1972.

[15] K. Sugihara, “Classification of impossible objects,” Perception, vol. 11,pp. 65–74, 1982.

[16] K. Sugihara, Machine Interpretation of Line Drawings, MIT Press,Cambridge, 1986.

[17] K. Sugihara, Joy of Impossible Objects (in Japanese), Iwanami-Shoten,Tokyo, 1997.

[18] K. Sugihara, “Three-dimensional realization of anomalous pictures—An application of picture interpretation theory to toy design,” PatternRecognition, vol. 30, no. 9, pp. 1061–1067, 1997.

[19] K. Sugihara, “A characterization of a class of anomalous solids,”Interdisciplinary Information Science, vol. 11, pp. 149–156, 2005.

[20] E. Terouanne, “On a class of ‘Impossible’ figures: A new language for anew analysis,” Journal of Mathematical Psychology, vol. 22, pp. 20–47,1980.

[21] D. J. A. Welsh, Matroid Theory, Academic Press, London, 1976.

Kokichi Sugihara Kokichi Sugihara received theB. Eng., M. Eng. and Dr. Eng. in 1971, 1973 and1980 respectively, from the University of Tokyo.He worked at Electrotechnical Laboratories of theJapanese Ministry of International Trade and Indus-try, and Nagoya University. He is now a professor ofthe Department of Mathematical Informatics of theUniversity of Tokyo. His research interests includecomputational geometry, robust geometric compu-tation, computer vision and computer graphics. Heis the author of “Machine Interpotation of Line

Drawings” (MIT Press, 1986), and a coauthor of “Spatial Tessellations—Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams” (John Wiley, 1992, 2000).He is a member of Japan SIAM, Operations Research Society of Japan, ACM,IEEE, etc.

This is a reproduction with permission of the paper originally published in the Proceedings of 8th Hellenic-European Conference on Computer Mathematics and Its Applications (HERCMA 2007), Athen, Greece, September 20-22, 2007, edited by Elias A. Lipitakis.

Kokichi Sugihara is currently Specially Appointed Professor in Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Organization for the Strategic Coordination of Research and Intellectual Property, Meiji University.

Many interesting materials can be accessed at http://home.mims.meiji.ac.jp/~sugihara/Welcomeincluding Professor Sugihara's prize winning project “Impossible Motion: Magnet-like Slopes” which won the 2010 Best Illusion of the Year Contest (see figure below).



Perhaps the most striking difference between the teaching of mathematics in Russia and standard mathematics education in the West is that the

former includes a separate course in geometry taught over a five-year period. It has been over fifty years since it was declared in the West that “Euclid must go” (cited in [3]). Even aside from this, the “Western” course in geometry was often conceived of (and continues to be conceived of) as occupying only one year and certainly not as constituting a constant accompaniment for students from sixth grade on, throughout all of their middle and high school years.

In Russia, Euclid and Euclidean geometry did not go anywhere. Plane geometry is taught in grades 7–9 (6–8)a for 2–3 hours per week; three-dimensional geometry is taught in grades 10–11 (9–10), usually for 2 hours per week. The course in plane geometry is thus intended to occupy over 200 hours of classes, and the course in three-dimensional geometry approximately 140 hours. In addition, the mathematics classes in Russian elemen-tary schools and the lower grades of the so called “basic schools” (grades 5-6) include sections visual geometry; in other words, students are exposed to what might be characterised as the informal study of geometry.

The aims and objectives of such a program in geometry have by no means always been envisioned in the same way, and their implementation has also varied, so it would be a mistake to suppose that the history of teaching geometry in Russia is the history of a kind of stagnation. On the contrary, the teaching of geometry has been and remains the subject of passionate debate. We will attempt to represent different views and approaches that have existed over the past fifty years in Russian schools. Since our account will necessarily be limited by the size of this publication, many mathematical and methodological details will

be skipped. On the whole we will focus mainly on the analysis of textbooks and programs, which classroom practices in fact follow in many respects, although it is impossible to describe all the actual and possible varieties of classroom practices here.

1. The Contents of the Course in Geometry in Russian Schools

The contents of the course “Geometry” in the most recent programs at the time of this writing ([12]) consists of the following sections (the number of hours recommended by the program for the study of each section is indicated in parentheses):

Grades 5–6. Visual geometry (45 hours). Students are given a visual sense of basic two-dimensional figures, their construction, and various ways in which they may be positioned with respect to one another, as well as measurements of lengths, angles, and areas. The concept of the congruence of figures and certain trans-formations of the plane (symmetries) are discussed. Students are also familiarized with three-dimensional figures, their representations, cross-sections, and unfoldings, as well as with formulas for determining their volumes.

Grades 7–9 are devoted to the systematic study of plane geometry, which includes the following sections:

a We remind readers that after Russian education officially switched to an 11-year program in the early 1990s, the nomenclature changed: sixth grade became seventh grade, seventh grade became eighth grade, and so on.

On the Teaching of Geometry in RussiaOn the Teaching of Geometry in Russia

Alexander Karp & Alexey Werner



• Straight lines and angles (20 hours).• Triangles (65 hours).• Quadrilaterals (20 hours).• Polygons (10 hours).• The circle and the disk (20 hours).• Geometric transformations (10 hours).• Compass and straightedge constructions (5 hours).• Measuring geometric quantities (25 hours).• Coordinates (10 hours).• Vectors (10 hours).• Extra time—20 hours.

In grades 10-11, geometry is studied at the basic and advanced levels. Second-generation standards for the upper grades are still being developed, while according to [13], at the basic level, students in grades 10-11 were required to study the following topics in solid geometry:

• Straight lines and planes in space.• Polyhedra.• Objects and surfaces of rotation.• The volumes of objects and the areas of their

surfaces. • Coordinates and vectors.

The content of each section is quite rich. For each topic, the programs indicate the basic skill set that the students must acquire. For example, in the section on “Triangles”, students must learn:

• To identify on a geometric drawing, formu-late definitions of, and draw the following: right, acute, obtuse, isosceles, and equilateral triangles; the altitude, the median, the bisector, and the midpoint connector of a triangle.

• To formulate the definition of congruent triangles. To formulate and prove theorems on sufficient conditions for triangles to be congruent.

• To explain and illustrate the triangle inequality.

• To formulate and prove theorems on the properties of isosceles triangles and sufficient conditions for them to be congruent, the

relations between the sides and angles of a triangle, the sum of the angles of a triangle, the exterior angles of a triangle, the midpoint connector of a triangle.

• To formulate the definition of similar triangles.• To formulate and prove theorems on suffi-

cient conditions for triangles to be congruent, Thales’ theorem.

• To formulate definitions of and illustrate the concepts of the sine, cosine, tangent, and cotangent of the acute angle of a right triangle.

• To derive formulas expressing trigonometric functions as ratios of the lengths of the sides of a right triangle. To formulate and prove the Pythagorean theorem.

• To formulate the definitions of the sine, cosine, tangent, and cotangent of angles from 0º to 180º. To derive formulas expressing the functions of angles from 0º to 180º through the functions of acute angles. To formulate and explain the basic trigonometric identity. Given a trigonometric function of an angle, to find a specified trigonometric function of that angle. To formulate and prove the law of sines and the law of cosines.

• To formulate and prove theorems on the points of intersection of perpendicular bisectors, bisectors, medians, altitudes or their extensions.

• To investigate the properties of a triangle using computer programs.

• To solve problems involving proofs, computa-tions, and geometric constructions by using the properties of triangles and the relations between them as well as the methods for constructing proofs that have been studied ([12, pp. 36–37])b.

It should be noted that although algebra and geom-etry are taught as two separate subjects, the course in algebra addresses some topics (concepts) that pertain to the course in geometry as well. One example is the section of the algebra course that covers “Cartesian Coordinates in the Plane”; another is the section on “Logic and Sets” (10 hours) in the second-generation Standards ([12, p. 16]), which belongs both to the course in algebra and the course in geometry.

b This and subsequent translations from Russian are by Alexander Karp.



Comparing the recently published second-gener-ation Standards for basic schools, cited above, with previously published Standards ([14]) or even earlier programs, we find few differences. The contents of the course, in terms of the list of concepts and proposi-tions covered, have remained stable. Naturally, thirty years ago there was no investigation of the properties of a triangle with the help of a computer program, mentioned above, nor was such a problem even posed at the time (nor is it often encountered today in actual classrooms, by all appearances); but problems involving proofs, computations, and constructions that require knowledge of the many theorems studied in the course are assigned and solved today largely as they were years ago.

2. The Aims and Characteristics of the Course in Geometry in Russia

“Why study geometry?” is a question that has been discussed extensively by the international community of mathematics educators, and many arguments have been made in favor of studying geometry (see, for example [5]). Russia’s official state program in math-ematics proclaims the following:

The contents of the section “Geometry” is aimed at developing students’ spatial imagination and logical reasoning skills through the systematic study of the properties of geometric shapes in the plane and in space and through the use of these properties in solving problems of a computational and constructional nature. A substantial role is also assigned to the develop-ment of geometric intuition. The combination of visual demonstrability and rigor constitutes an integral part of geometric knowledge. The sections on “Coordinates” and “Vectors” contain material that is largely interdisciplinary in nature and finds application in various branches of mathematics as well as related subjects ([12, p. 7]).

Thus, the teaching of geometry is seen to be of great benefit precisely for the role that it plays in students’ development. Geometry is undoubtedly useful as an applied discipline as well, as is indicated by the conclu-sion of the quoted passage: natural scientists speak a geometric language, and by failing to teach students this language, we compromise their comprehension of the natural sciences and thereby also condemn them

to a sort of second-class status in the modern world (whatever the rhetoric employed to legitimise this fact). Russian pedagogy, however, has traditionally harbored the conviction that education is valuable not only and not principally because it conveys various kinds of skills and knowledge that may be subsequently applied directly in practical life, but also because it facilitates the development of students’ reasoning skills (this tradition found expression in the works of Vygotsky [15], which in turn became very influential).

So what is behind this general proposition concerning the development of logical reasoning skills and why is geometry particularly important in this respect? The tradition of major scientists being involved in the writing of courses in geometry, which goes back to Euclid and Legendre, was continued in Russia (USSR), where many outstanding research mathematicians thought about school-level education, wrote school-level textbooks, and, by doing so, have left us their notions about the role and significance of geometry.

In his programmatic article “On Geometry”, outstanding Russian geometer academician A D Alexandrov [1] wrote:

The logic of geometry consists not only in sepa-rate formulations and proofs, but in the entire system of formulations and proofs considered as a whole. The meaning of every definition, every theorem, every proof, is defined in the final analysis only by this system, which is what makes geometry a unified theory and not a collection of isolated definitions and propositions. This idea of an exact science with a rigorously unfolding system of deductive conclusions, which geom-etry conveys, is as important as the precision of each conclusion considered on its own (p. 59).

In other words, geom-etry teaches students how to analyse and compre-hend a system of propo-sitions—how to corre-late separate facts, how to look for connections and mutual influences between them. Genuine understanding is possible only through an under-standing of the system as a whole. Conversely, Alexandrov



although thinking in a fragmentary fashion and ignoring various facts do not entirely preclude all kinds of reasoning, such an approach inevitably makes reasoning more primitive. It would be misleading, of course, to claim that only the study of geometry can teach students a system-oriented approach, but the historic role of geometry as the model for a systematic program suggests that it would be wise to consider, before rejecting geometry altogether, the possible substitutes that might be found for it in this particular respect within the school program (if any such substi-tutes exist). We should point out that a comparably systematic course in algebra or the natural sciences is likely impossible at the school level (at least we know of no large-scale experiment with any course of this nature).

Another outstanding Russian geometer, A V Pogorelov [8], wrote in the introduction to one of his courses in Euclidean geometry:

In offering the present course, our basic assump-tion has been that the main purpose of teaching geometry in school is to teach students to reason logically, to support their assertions with arguments, to prove. Very few of those who graduate from school will become math-

ematicians, let alone geometers. There will be those who, in their professional lives, will never once make use of the Pythagorean theorem. However, it is unlikely that we would find anyone who will not have to reason, analyse, prove (p. 7).

At the same time, the logical aspect of geometry stands in a complicated relationship to its visual aspect (as is indicated in the passage from the Standards quoted above). As A D Alexandrov wrote:

The distinctive feature of geometry, which distinguishes it from other branches of mathematics and from all sciences in general, consists precisely in the indissoluble organic conjunction of lively imagination and rigorous logic. Geometry in its essence is spatial imagi-nation, permeated and organised by rigorous

logic. In any genuinely geometric sentence, be it an axiom, a theorem or a definition, these two elements of geometry are inseparably present: the visual picture and the rigorous formulation, the rigorous logical deduction. Where either of these sides is absent, there is no genuine geometry ([2, p. 6]).

The student is in a sense invited to retrace the footsteps of the ancients, who were able to pass from observation to interpretation and abstraction. This experience of systematic mathematical modeling also renders geometry particularly important in the eyes of Russian mathematics educators.

Visual ideas, even visual ideas that are not subse-quently proven, are naturally very valuable. A N Kolmogorov, perhaps the greatest Russian mathema-tician of the twentieth century, criticised the then-standard textbook by N N Nikitin [7] as follows:

[The textbook] does not sufficiently distinguish between the two levels at which the material is presented: the logical-deductive level and the visual-descriptive level. The combination of these two levels in textbooks for grades 6–8 seems to me unavoidable. In my opinion, the body of geometric facts with which students become acquainted purely through description might be somewhat expanded.

And he went on:

But this must not obscure the notion of geometry as a deductive science in the minds of the students. This notion must already become quite clear to them as a result of their study of geometry in grades 6–8. This duality of the school course in geometry must be understandable to the students themselves. They must always know what they are proving and on the basis of which assumptions, what they are simply told on faith, and which conclusions they themselves reach on the basis of visual arguments without a clear proof ([6, p. 26]).

A D Alexandrov saw the opportunity frankly to indicate about virtually all propositions examined in school geometry whether they were accepted as unproven or rigorously grounded, as well as the oppor-tunity for all students to establish the truth for them-selves, without trusting to the authority of a teacher or

Pogorelov



a textbook—as the enor-mous potential benefit that geometry had to offer for developing students’ minds and worldviews. (Indeed, it is impossible to deny that in other school subjects, students must constantly or at least very often trust cited facts, while in geometry classes they become convinced of everything or almost everything on their own). As Alexandrov [1] wrote:

The deep objective of the course in geometry consists of the assimilation of the scientific worldview, of the formation of its foundations. It is shaped by an unequivocal respect for estab-lished truth, the need to prove that which is put forward as truth, the refusal to substitute faith or references to authoritative sources for proof. The striving for truth, the search for a proof (or a refutation)—this is the active, and therefore the dominant, aspect of the foundation of the scientific worldview...The respect for truth and the demand for proofs convey an extremely important ethical message. In its simplest, but very important form, it consists of the imperative not to judge without proving, not to succumb to impressions, moods, and slander where it is necessary to get to the bottom of the facts. Scientific commitment to truth consists precisely of the striving to justify one’s convictions about any issue with observa-tions and conclusions that are as objective, as unsusceptible to subjective influences and passions, as is humanly possible (p. 60).

Further, we will focus on differences between conceptions of the role of geometry and approaches to its teaching; here, we have addressed that side of geometry about which there may be said to be a consensus. Naturally, such complex issues as “the scientific worldview” are almost never mentioned in geometry classes. What an ordinary lesson looks like to working teachers may be imagined, for example, by looking at the methodological recommendations put forward by Glazkov, Nekrasov, and Yudina ([4] or later editions). Let us examine a single eighth-grade class devoted to the rhombus.

At the beginning of the lesson, the class is asked to solve the following two problems on the basis of drawings that have been made on the blackboard beforehand:

1. Find the length of two congruent sides of an isosceles triangle whose height is equal to 6 cm and whose vertex angle is equal to 120º.

2. The diagonals of a parallelogram are mutually perpendicular. Prove that all of its sides are congruent.

It is then suggested that the teacher formulate a defi-nition of the rhombus and ask the students themselves to define those properties of the rhombus which derive from a definition of the rhombus as a special type of parallelogram, and then to prove particular properties of the rhombus on their own. The recommendations do not stipulate who is to formulate these properties: this may depend on the class; in one class, students may do this independently, for example, using drawings, while in another class it may be done by the teacher.

Thereafter, it is suggested that the students begin solving problems, and it is recommended that the following problems from the textbook be used for this purpose:

• In a rhombus, one of the diagonals is congruent to a side. Find the angles of the rhombus.

• Prove that a parallelogram is a rhombus if one of its diagonals is an angle bisector.

At the conclusion of the lesson, it is recommended that the students be asked to read on their own the paragraph about squares in the textbook and then to answer the following questions orally, but possibly making use of suggestive drawings prepared by the teacher beforehand:

Is a quadrilateral a square if its diagonals are:(a) congruent and mutually perpendicular?(b) mutually perpendicular and have a

common midpoint?(c) congruent, mutually perpendicular, and

have a common midpoint?

As can be seen, all of the problems are quite traditional. At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that the lesson presupposes active and varied involvement by the students—who, on their own, carry out proofs, construct arguments orally and in

Kolmogorov



writing, and interpret and analyse diagrams. Students are expected to possess a comparatively high level of knowledge about the topics that have already been covered; in order to solve the very first problem, students must know the properties of an isosceles triangle and the relations in a right triangle with a 30º angle. In general, the lesson is conducted as a sequence of problem-solving activities that are connected with one another; for example, solving the problems with which the lesson begins helps to solve the problems that are posed later on, which, therefore, would not be as difficult for the students.

The ability to construct lessons in which intensive reasoning and investigative work will fall within the students’ powers is essential for realising those aims and objectives of the geometry course which we have discussed above and which may be achieved only

References [1] A. D. Alexandrov, O geometrii [On Geometry],

Matematika v shkole 3 (1980) 56-62.[2] A. D. Alexandrov, A. L. Werner and V. I. Ryzhik,

Nachala stereometrii, 9 [Elementary Three-dimensional Geometry, 9] (Prosveschenie, Moscow, 1981).

[3] H. F. Fehr, Geometry as a secondary school subject, in Geometry in the Mathematics Curriculum. Thirty-sixth Yearbook, ed. K. Henderson (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Reston, VA, 1973), pp. 369-380.

[4] Yu. A. Glazkov, V. B. Nekrasov and I. I. Yudina, O prepodavanii geometrii v 7-9 klassakh po uchebniku L. S. Atanasyana, V. F. Butuzova, S. B. Kadomtseva, E. G. Poznyaka, I. I.Yudinoy. Metodicheskie rekomendatsii [On the Teaching of Geometry in Classes 7-9 Using the Textbook of L. S. Atanasyan, V. F.Butuzov, S. B. Kadomtsev, E. G. Poznyak, I. I. Yudina. Methodological Recommendations] (MGIUU, Moscow, 1991).

[5] G. González and P. Herbst, Competing arguments for the geometry course: Why were American high school students supposed to study geometry in the twentieth century? International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education 1(1) (2006) 7-33.

[6] A. N. Kolmogorov, Ob uchebnikakh geometrii na 1966/67 uchebnyi god [On the Geometry Textbooks for the 1966-67 School Year], Matematika v shkole 3 (1966) 26-30.

[7] N. N. Nikitin, Geometriya 6-8 [Geometry 6-8] (Prosveschenie, Moscow,1961).

[8] A. V. Pogorelov, Elementarnaya geometriya [Elementary Geometry] (Nauka, Moscow, 1974).

[9] G. Polya, How to Solve It (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1973).

[10] G. Polya, Mathematical Discovery (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1981).

[11] G. Polya, Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning; Vol. 1. Introduction and Analogy in Mathematics; Vol. 2. Patterns of Plausible Inference (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1954).

[12] Standards, Standarty vtorogo pokoleniya. Primernye programmy osnovnogo obschego obrazovaniya. Matematika [Second-Generation Standards. Model Programs for Basic General Education. Mathematics] (Prosveschenie, Moscow, 2009).

[13] Standards, Standart obschego obrazovaniya po matematike [Standards of General Education in Mathematics], Matematika v shkole 4 (2004) 9-16.

[14] Standards, Standart osnovnogo obschego obrazovaniya po matematike [Standards of Basic General Education in Mathematics], Matematika v shkole 4 (2004) 4-9.

[15] L. Vygotsky, Thought and Language (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986).

through systematic and consistent work over many years. At the same time, the stability of the contents of the course also helps teachers to accumulate necessary teaching experience.

Equally important is that over literally centuries of geometry instruction, an exceptionally rich array of problems and educational and developmental activi-ties has been accumulated. An enormous number of the problems analysed by Polya ([9–11]) consisted of problems in geometry. And this is no accident: to those who want to know “how to solve it”, geometry offers special possibilities. Those who believe that students transfer what they have learned—and that by learning to solve problems in geometry, students also learn something beyond geometry—cannot afford to turn their backs on geometry. That is why Russian educators do not give up traditional Euclidean geometry.



Alexander Karp is an associate professor of mathematics education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his PhD in mathematics educa-tion from Herzen Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg, Russia. He also holds a degree from the same university in history and education. For many years, Karp worked as a teacher in a school for mathematically gifted in St. Petersburg and as a teacher educator. Currently, his scholarly interests span several areas, including gifted education, mathematics teacher education, the theory of mathematical problem solving, and the history of mathemat-ics education. He is the managing editor of the International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education and the author of over 100 publications, including over 20 books.

Alexey Werner belongs to A D Aleksandrov’s geometrical school. He is a professor at the Geometry Department of Herzen Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg. Werner received a candidate’s degree (PhD) in the physical-mathematical sciences from Leningrad University and a doctoral degree (Dr. Hab.) in the physical-mathematical sciences from Herzen University in 1969. He has written over 150 works on modern geometry (on the theory of convex and saddle surfaces) and on the problems of geometry education; in addition, he has written (together with coauthors, including A D Aleksandrov, A P Karp, V I Ryzhik, and others) several series of school textbooks in mathematics for schools of general education, as well as for schools with an advanced course of study in mathematics and for schools with a humanities profile. Werner has sponsored 30 PhD dissertations; two of his students have become doctors (Dr. Hab.) of sciences.

Alexander KarpTeachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA

Alexey WernerHerzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Russia



Through the publication of ORIGAMICS by K Haga, J C Fonacier and M Isoda in 2008 [1], the mathematical exploration of origami is now

well-known for providing attractive hands-on activity for abstract mathematics. In this short article, we would like to describe the classroom activity conducted by Masahiko Sakamoto at the East Asia Regional Confer-ence on Mathematics Education (EARCOME5) 2010 [2, 3].

Origamics activities have been used for geometric exploration. In Japan, such a tradition has already existed before World War II. On the other hand, when Haga, a professor of biology, began his origami investi-gations in the 1970s, there were no mathematicians in Japan who worked in this area. In the 1990s, scientists and engineers began to recognise its significance for its applications such as Miura’s folding which has been used to simulate large solar panel arrays for space satel-lites. The mathematical study of origami, Origamics, has now found its way into many areas from elementary school to mathematical sciences and engineering. It was with this motivation that Sakamoto, who studied with Haga, planned the topic of his classroom activity for EARCOME5.

Using a square piece of paper, a triangular prism can be folded as follows:

Let's Fold a Triangular Prism from A4 Paper and Enjoy Origamics!

The solution of the problem of using A4 paper, which has the golden ratio, is well known by Haga’s origamics approach. However, solutions of this kind of questions are not invented by Haga only. In fact, various solutions have been invented and re-invented by our students. We have developed many related questions and investigated various extensions of mathematical problems using origami. Before we begin the folding, we have to remember that a triangular prism has four triangular faces. Thus, everyone would try to fold into triangles. You may have realised that there are various possibilities if we allow the sheet to overlap. This is the reason why Sakamoto and his class first asked questions about the ratio of the two sides of an A4 paper, and then told themselves, “Let’s fold a triangular prism with a total surface area of square root 2 from A4 paper.

First, one should know some basic procedures of origami for folding into triangles required . If you have some origami experience folding things such as airplanes and cranes, you would have known the basic strategies:

(a) Fold the paper into half along the line joining the midpoints of opposite edgs and along the diagonals,

(b) folding at right angles to a given line, (c) folding along an angle bisector.

The book ORIGAMICS explores further ways of setting the meeting points and so on. But for our purpose here, these basic strategies are enough. For example, how many triangles can you find in the following case?

Masami Isoda and Masahiko Sakamoto

Sakamoto explored the paper folding of a triangular prism from A4 paper. You can challenge yourself and find out how interesting and enjoyable origamics activities can be.



Even if you have no intuition for paper folding, you will see that the number of ways of folding twice is 16 since there are only four basic strategies in origami. With 40 students in a classroom, some of them are able to construct triangular prisms. Indeed, in the case of Sakamoto’s class, there was no need for him to ask them how many triangles there were. This is because many of his students had good intuition in finding various answers by themselves and by teaching each other.

His experiment confirmed that the student could construct different kinds of prisms. He would call on a student to explain his or her construction and there would be a discussion about it.

Instead of the usual practice of giving the solutions, the Japanese problem solving approach does not only aim at teaching how to solve the problems, but also to teach how to formulate the mathematical ques-tions, explore solutions and discuss, share and extend

mathematical ideas, and to appreciate mathe matical activities. Students thus enjoy origamics activities and develop their mathematical thinking by themselves.

Imagine a discussion on folding an A4 paper and how to recognise a trian gular prism. While students would try it on their own, it may be necessary for the teacher to ask some questions like “Is it a triangular prism?” Thus he would mention that when a yellow triangle meets a non-yellow congruent trian gle, they will form one triangle in a plane. He would then focus on each face of the triangular prism. After students have done it on their own, the teacher would change the conditions of the folding and investigate different possibilities. In particular, it leads to the construction of solids and tessellations.

Students already knew that a line which goes through the intersection of the diagonals of the rectangular divide its area into half. Based on the basic strategy, students fold every right angle to the line PQ. After further hints, the teacher demonstrates that one can construct a number of different types of triangular prisms.



Professor Masami Isoda is at CRICED, University of Tsukuba, Japan. He is well-known as a director (project overseer) of the APEC Lesson Study Project. His content-software was given an award by the Minister of Education of Japan. Isoda’s book

“Curves” received an award for being the most beautiful book of the year in the area of natural science by the Japan Publishers Association. He is well-known in Japan as the Chief Editor of the journal of Japan Society of Mathematical Education.

Masahiko Sakamoto teaches at the Junior High School attached to the University of Tsukuba, Japan. He has been working with K Haga on the topic of the lessons for classroom study in mathematics. He is inter-ested in various aspects of students’ learning processes on the lesson study.

References [1] K. Haga, J. C. Fonacier and M. Isoda, Origamics:

Mathematical Explorations Through Paper Folding (World Scientific, Singapore, 2008).

[2] M. Isoda, M. Stephens, Y. Ohara and T. Miyakawa, Japanese Lesson Study in Mathematics (World Scientific, Singapore, 2007).

[3] M. Isoda, Japanese Theories for Lesson Study in Mathematics Education, Proc. EARCOME5, Vol. 1 (2010) pp. 176-181.

Another possibility is the one shown in the diagram below.

Even after the class has ended, students were keen to continue their origami experiments. Using only the basic strategies for folding, the “If not, what?” strategy in origamics develops and enhances students’ intuition in mathematics.



Graeme Wake



The quote above comes from Professor John Ockendon FRS, Founding Director of the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Math-

ematics (OCCAM) which was formally launched in mid-2009, having earlier received major support from Saudi Arabian based funders (King Abdullah University of Science and Technol ogy). John made this very apt statement in his opening remarks at the European Conference in Industrial and Applied Mathematics in London in 2008.

The recent growth of activity in industrial math-ematics (and statistics) world-wide is really remarkable, with a wide variety of degree programs, study groups, con sulting frameworks and the like in existence. These activities frequently overlap and are adapted to take on board the local circumstances. Europe and North America clearly lead in terms of the scale of activity, but there are flourishing and developing activities here and in our South-East and Northern Asian neighbours. Our own ANZIAM Mathematics-in-Industry Study Group (MISG) continues to flourish and moves around the region at about three-yearly intervals. In 2010 it moved from the University of Wollongong to RMIT University in Melbourne. The very successful 2010 MISG was held in early February under a team ably led by Associate Professor John Shepherd of RMIT.

You may ask “Why is this happening now?” Perhaps it is another timely thrust towards applications driven by the demands of technology, often encouraged by governments who see this as a key underpinning framework for advancement in a highly technical world. Whatever it is, there are a lot of opportunities for us in our own contexts.

Over 2007–2009 the Global Science Forum (GSF) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperative Develop-ment (OECD) conducted a major review of industrial math ematics world-wide. Both Australia and New Zealand are, of course, member countries of the OECD. The first report followed a year after an initial gather ing was held in Germany in early 2007 (which was attended by Professor Tim Marchant from the University of Wollongong).

Industrial Mathematics: “On the Crest of a Wave”

The OECD report is an excellent overview docu-ment. It makes the point that in dustrial innovation is increasingly based on the results and techniques of scientific research, and that this research is both underpinned and driven by mathematics.

This is justified by the initial presentations at the 2007 conference. The report goes on to say that:

Given the increasingly intimate connection between innovation, science and mathematics, it is natural to inquire whether the interface between all these three activities is functioning in an optimal way

and, I add, how they can be improved.

The report concludes that, while many industrial problems have a significant math ematical compo-nent and the intellectual challenges they pose often fall within topical areas of current research in the mathematical sciences, industrial problems also often extend well beyond the “envelope of classical topics in mathematics”. I note that generally “industry” should be interpreted broadly and extends into the biological, medical, agricultural, social, and financial areas, as well as the tradi tional areas of engineering and the physical sciences. It is noted that increasingly stronger links between mathematics and industry will be “both beneficial to the partners and to national economies”. These links will inspire new mathematics and enhance the competitive advantage of companies. There are specific recom mendations made under the headings:

• Mathematics for Industrial Innovation —

options canvassed include the cre ation of Interdisciplinary Research Centres, special positions in industrial mathematics, the scheduling of workshops (like our ANZIAM Study Group), and specialist workshops to highlight novel mathematical techniques relevant for industry.

• Education and Training — a revision of the

traditional curriculum, both in content and approach, including provision of opportuni-ties for secondary school teachers to engage in academic–industrial interactions.

• Interface between Mathematics and Industry — the formation of “joint teams”, positions for “translators”, web access for information about problems, meth ods, solutions, centres of excellence and available expertise, with networks of experts across institutional boundaries and the sharing of things like model agreements on intellectual property rights.

• Academic Infrastructure — to be changed to support interdisciplinary activ ities, rewards to be made for faculty involvement in outreach activities, the creation of faculty positions for researchers from industry (which would pro vide much-needed role models for students), and the maintenance of quality control of industrial mathematics projects.

• Industry Infrastructure — the need for the availability of positions in industry for qualified researchers (notwithstanding the different perspectives industry and researchers have in regard to the timescales involved), the willingness of industries to participate in workshop activities and the like, and the provision of industry support for the enhancement of mathematics in industry.

• National and International Coordination — this is happening, but a more collaborative (and less competitive) approach is needed to

maintain critical mass, the sharing of exper-tise, and lessening of the wasteful duplication of effort.

This is a small overview of the whole report which can be found on the OECD website (see [1]).

It is acknowledged that Australia and New Zealand (through AMSI, ANZIAM, CSIRO, and elsewhere) have made some steps in this direction but much more should and could be done.

Following the publication of this first report, the GSF formed an “Experts’ Working Group” to review and report on the various mechanisms used to further activities in Industrial Mathematics around the world. The purpose of this was to provide a blueprint that groups interested in proceeding could follow. I was privileged to represent Australia and New Zealand on this small working party, thanks to a nomination by Australia. This second report looks across the countries of the OECD and gives representative descriptions of activities along the lines of those advocated in the first report. It does not pretend to be comprehensive and was of course dependent on input from the “small” committee (of 22 people) from all around the world. But it is heartening to see that we are in fact moderately ac tive in this important area in spite of the rather limited collaboration between institutions. I was particularly involved in advocating the need for “publicity” on how it works in practice and the need for industrial leaders to become educated in the whole process (see Section II.7 of the second report [2]). This short article represents in part my reporting back to the community. For the report of the Experts’ Group see [2]. It is an evolving document and is updated regularly as new activities are reported.

Graeme Wake is Professor of Industrial Mathematics at Massey University Auckland and Director of its Centre for Mathematics in Industry since 2006. He was Director of the ANZIAM MISG in Auckland for three years, 2004–2006.

Graeme WakeInstitute of Information and Mathematical Sciences,Massey University, Auckland, New [email protected]

References [1] Report on Mathematics in Industry (July 2008).

Global Science Forum, Organisation for Eco nomic Co-operation and Development, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/31/19/42617645.pdf.

[2] Report on Mechanisms for Promoting Mathematics in Industry (April 2009). Global Science Forum, Organisa-tion for Economic Co-operation and Development, www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/1/41019441.pdf.

Reproduced from Gazette of Australian Mathematical Society, May 2010



David Shteinman



David Shteinman

In a recent edition of the Gazette, Graeme Wake [1] wrote of the success of indus trial mathematics as something that, like the crest of a wave, is about to

“break through”. In this article I would like to inform AustMS members of projects al ready underway in industrial mathematics and statistics through MASCOS (the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems). To extend the nautical metaphor — we are surfing down a wave now, and there are more waves coming!

Since 2008 MASCOS has conducted 14 projects in industry. Industry sectors include transport (NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, and Vicroads), defence (De fence Science and Technology Organisation), coal mining (MSEC Consulting Group), medical devices (Cochlear), mental health (the Mental Health Research Institute) and nuclear science (ANSTO). For project details see MASCOS annual reports at www.complex.org.au.

MASCOS projects are not like typical consulting projects, where a specific prob lem is solved using existing mathematics, and recommendations are made. Rather, each project starts with an open problem set by the client. For example “design a new traffic control system to reduce congestion”, or “design a statistical model to predict the cost of road network simulations based on network complexity” or “propose a new theoretical framework to improve the confidence in risk modelling of ground movement due to under-ground mining”. These projects require original applied

Industrial Mathematics: Here and Now . . . Positive in All Directions

research in a combination of mathematics, statistics and engineering to fill the gap identified by the open problem. Hence, in addition to the commercial value to the industry client, each project has research value to the professional math ematician or statistician. Research areas covered include statistical mechanics of non-equilibrium systems, extreme value theory, classification of high-dimensional data, risk modelling and more.

All these projects have been fully funded by the industrial clients themselves. Un like OCCAM in the UK (Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Math-ematics), mentioned in [1], we have not had to rely on Saudi Arabian funding.

There are clear reasons for the successes so far, and yet there are barriers to fur ther success. Contrary to popular opinion, these barriers are not due to lack of government funding or to private industry or university administrations. Rather the barriers lie within the mathematics community itself, such as some cultural attitudes partly related to the academic promotion process (see “Barriers” below).

We now give three sample projects as illustrations.

Project 1.

Traffic Networks: The Dynamics of Congestion

The transport sector, in particular road traffic modelling, has been the sector of greatest activity for MASCOS projects. It has been a perfect combination

of meeting an urgent industry need (how to reduce road traffic congestion without building new infra-structure) and research interest (improving the methods of mod elling non-equilibrium systems that are constrained in a network structure). This was verbalised by a Vicroads manager who said at a meeting with MASCOS:

We know traffic engineering very well. Now we want to hear from mathemati cians and physi-cists to help solve the big problem of congestion.

In the two-stage project with Vicroads “Arterial road congestion: network mod elling and improved control”, researchers from the Critical Phenomena group of the MASCOS Melbourne University node, led by Dr Tim Garoni and Dr Jan de Gier, have developed a Cellular Automata (CA) simulation model of traffic flow in generic urban networks. The research will be published in 2010 in Physical Review (see [2]).

The model was applied to a specific road network in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, the objective being to develop alternative traffic light control strategies for the urban road networks managed by Vicroads. Currently, the only input data for the signal control systems is provided from induction-loop detectors, and this information is rather limited. MASCOS’s CA model was used to study the per formance of a range of more general adaptive traffic signal systems, which utilise more detailed input data. The model, and its results, are being used as support for upgrading to new traffic detection systems for Melbourne roads.

In particular, the CA model was used to study the relative efficiencies of two dis tinct types of adaptive traffic signal systems; a system that only considers the congestion of upstream links, versus a system that considers the congestion of both upstream and downstream links. The simulations suggested that the latter system is more efficient — around 5% better in the case of the Kew network. A 5% reduction in congestion for no extra infrastructure cost is highly significant.

The project has raised a wide range of scientific issues. In contrast to traffic on freeways, traffic flow on networks is, as yet, poorly understood. The CA model and its application have led to the following fundamental issues being addressed in the ongoing project [2]:

• study of parameter sensitivity and identification of critical traffic states

• determination of phase diagrams and phase structures, that is, what are the fundamen-tally different behaviours of traffic on a

network? • identification of critical-length scales such as

mean free paths and correlation lengths • investigation of the existence of scaling • investigation of non-equilibrium work

relations and fluctuation theorems: can we describe global states of traffic using thermo-dynamic quantities, and how do these relate to fluctuations in density and flow?

• development of a computationally effective traffic model on a network with about 100 intersections. This requires identification of relevant features, so that irrelevant details can be neglected.

• correlations between optimisation functions: are Minimal Delay, Optimal Flow, and Total Travel Time equivalent measures?

Project 2.

Guidelines for Designing and Analysing Traffic Micro-simulations

The expense of designing and building new road infra-structure or testing alterna tive traffic scenarios can run to billions of dollars. Therefore, all design changes are first assessed using traffic micro-simulation software.

In 2009, MASCOS identified a need for rigorous statistical analysis of the outputs of these simulations. In 2010 MASCOS is nearing completion of a three-stage project with the NSW Road and Transport Authority’s Network Performance De velopment Group to design and build a rigorous statistical framework to analyse the outputs of traffic micro-simulations. The project is being conducted by the author, on behalf of MASCOS’s UNSW node, assisted by Dr Sandy Clarke of Melbourne University’s Statistical Consulting Centre.

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) techniques, traditionally used in industrial qual ity control, have been adapted to the analysis and design of traffic micro-simula tions. EDA techniques have been used to gain insight into the salient features of the output of a wide range of traffic simulations, ranging from small arterial networks to freeways and entire suburbs. The EDA has shown, for example, the importance of extreme events or “outliers”. Outliers are being used as a diagnostic tool when correlated with other inputs to distinguish between model errors and a real occurrence of a rare event (for example, a major accident).

Once high-quality simulation data is obtained, the sources of variability in the simulations are considered, using ANOVA, as well as the implications of this for the precision of estimates of network characteristics,



such as vehicle hours trav elled. This informs the choice of run size and comparisons between different traffic scenarios.

The final stage of the project will seek to find func-tional relationships between net work features, output precision, the number of simulation runs and the complexity of the network being simulated. Network complexity is described by features such as the number of zones, number of road links per intersection, size and shape of the network, total number of vehicle trips, time duration of simulation, and boundary congestion effects (the effect of delayed or “unreleased” vehicles that could not en ter the network due to congestion or incomplete trips, and of vehicles that could not exit the network due to congestion).

The MASCOS/RTA project is unique in its application of advanced statistical methods to traffic micro-simulation. It has aroused great interest in the RTA and the wider traffic-modelling community. A technical paper and special session on its applications to policy evaluations in transport will be presented at the 17th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Busan, Korea in October 2010 (see [3]).

Project 3.

Mining and Geo-mechanics

MASCOS has established a three-stage project with MSEC Pty Ltd (Mine Sub sidence Engineering Consult-ants) of Sydney, to develop statistical methods using Extreme Value Theory (EVT) in order to improve prediction of the magnitude of ground subsidence due to underground coal mining, and the consequential impacts on structures (see [4]).

The first stage of this work was completed by Dr Scott Sisson of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW. This involved exploratory statistical analyses to quantify the probability that a future ground strain caused by mining exceeds a specified maximum tolerable subsidence (that is, a trigger point). It was demon strated that using EVT-motivated models to describe the extreme tails of MSEC’s observed strain data resulted in more credible fits than those based on alternative models originating from the full dataset. As a consequence, the predictions of future extreme subsidence in excess of the trigger points are more reliable.

The second stage of this project is being conducted by MASCOS post-doc Dr Yao ban Chan, who will

develop the statistical models more precisely. This involves the use of regression methods to improve accuracy and precision by the inclusion of relevant explanatory variables, such as the distance from the point of interest to the mine (a “far field” analysis), and the modelling of the relationship of subsidence strain and curvature. Dr Chan is also simplifying the imple-mentation of the EVT methods by supplying MSEC with programs written in the “R” software package, with documentation for easy application.

In 2010, work on the third and final stage of the project will aim to incorporate the effect of multiple “longwalls” (the mines excavated by drilling equip-ment mov ing underground), as well as smoothing raw curvature data. The application of statistical EVT to predict ground subsidence is a new application of the theory; it is also the first time that state-of-the-art statistics has been used in this particular industry sector [3].

The project hopes to establish, in a statistically rigorous manner, the extent to which factors (such as geology, valley width, distance to the leading edge of the longwall) known to influence ground movements in general, primarily drive the process of extreme strains or “upsidence” (upwards movement of a valley floor), and the extent to which these can then be used to predict future ground maximum movements at new locations.

The results from Stage 1 were used in MSEC’s 2009 submissions to the NSW Government. Stage 2 and 3 results will assist MSEC in its consultancy advice to Government and mining companies on the effects of proposed underground mines.

Reasons for Success

By analysing the most successful projects, and how they evolved, we can discern some characteristics that may contribute to the success of industrial mathematics projects in general.

Firstly the majority of the large-scale projects were created by the MASCOS industry division itself. We did not wait for a company to come to us with a prob lem. Rather, MASCOS approached an industry sector with the general outline of a project. For example, the idea of applying the methods of statistical mechan ics and critical phenomena to traffic flow dynamics was presented to the traffic management divisions of the RTA and Vicroads.

By taking this proactive approach of targeting industry sectors for specific projects we are able to satisfy the “double” demand of commercial benefit to the industry



partner and genuine research value for the mathematician. Furthermore this ap proach allowed us a significant role in shaping the project structure with respect to duration (all projects span a minimum of six months) and skill level (PhD level and above).

A second feature contributing to success was the researchers’ familiarisation with the domain of the problem at hand. Researchers on traffic projects learnt the basic elements of intersection control systems, traffic engineering principles and terminology. Researchers on the ANSTO project became familiar with the basics of nuclear research reactor operation, control and safety systems, regulations, and instrument calibration requirements. A mathematical modelling project that is devoid of such engineering and technology content would be of dubious value.

Project familiarisation was coupled with a willingness to “get one’s hands dirty” with real data. Surprisingly, this has been an obstacle when staffing projects. Patience and a degree of worldliness are required to accept that real-world data is never like the “toy” data presented in text books that students are trained on. However, that patience is repaid many times over with the intellectual satisfaction of subjecting theory to a reality test in a project that also makes a difference in the world.

Barriers

The single greatest barrier to further success in indus-trial projects has been a shortage of willing mathemati-cians and statisticians to participate in the projects.

The reasoning behind this reluctance usually goes as follows:

Objection 1: Industry-based projects are mere consulting and of little scientific value

Objection 2: Industry-based projects only lead to B-grade publications, at best

Conclusion: Working on an industry project is bad for my career advancement.

Earlier in this article I presented the scientific value of just three of our fourteen projects. Moreover, the history of mathematics and statistics is full of cases where work on a real-world problem led to a major advance in mathematics. Without the motivation and “raw data” of the problem the theoretical advance may never have occurred. Here is a sample in chronological order.

• Euler initiated Graph Theory from his solu-tion to the Koenigsberg bridge problem

• Gauss developed and demonstrated the Method of Least Squares as a way to predict the position of the asteroid Ceres

• Fourier developed what we know as “Fourier analysis” from trying to solve the heat equa-tion, which is of fundamental importance to all thermodynamics

• Heaviside step functions were developed to model electric current

• R A Fisher developed the Analysis of Variance and the entire basis of De signed Experiments to improve the efficiency of experiments on farming meth ods at Rothamsted Experi-mental Station

• Dantzig developed the Simplex Algorithm — the basis of linear programming and subsequent optimisation methods — as a way to solve very complex mil itary scheduling problems that had arisen in World War II.

I trust no reader of Gazette would claim that the careers of Gauss, Euler, Fourier, Heaviside, Fisher or Dantzig were degraded by the applied projects that resulted in their discoveries, nor that their work led to B-grade publications.

Projects in the real world can present a challenge to existing theory and that chal lenge can be idealised into new theory. Also, an industrial project may present as a novel application of existing theory. That is also a scientific contribution, as the use of new tools advances the domain area of the problem; see the traffic and mining examples above and [3] and [4]. In both cases the initial motivation came from a real physical problem.

There is a continuing strong demand for mathemati-cians and statisticians to per form applied research to solve industrial problems. At the very least this guaran tees the mathematical sciences community a large and continuous source of serious problems to work on. What is required is some overcoming of false perceptions (within the mathematics community) on scientific value and publication prospects. Starting with a small project can often lead to bigger things. MASCOS researchers have two Linkage Grant applications submitted in 2010 that arose from industry projects.

Engagement with industry through successful projects brings a range of “spin-off ” benefits; for example, improved public recognition for the impor-tance and value of the discipline. That in turn should enhance the view of the mathematical sciences in the eyes of many, including, most importantly, prospective students.



Finally, engagement with industry has one other major benefit — it reduces the de pendence of the mathematical sciences on government funding (profes-sional math ematicians’ biggest source of complaint). So, engaging with industry really is positive in all directions!

Those interested in participating in industry-based projects that require skills in mathematics or statistics

should contact the author at [email protected] and see www.complex.org.au.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank those members of MASCOS and UNSW School of Math-ematics and Statistics who made comments on an earlier draft of this article.

David Shteinman is a professional engineer and industrial entrepreneur with 25 years experience in manufacturing, mineral processing and the commercial applications of in dustrial mathematics and statistics. Since 2008 he has been the Industry Projects Manager of MASCOS (The Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems), and is based at the UNSW School of Mathe matics and Statistics.

David [email protected]

References [1] G. Wake, Industrial mathematics: ‘On the crest of

a wave’; Gaz. Aust. Math. Soc. 37 (2010) 88–90. [2] J. de Gier, T. Garoni, and Z. Zhou, Autocorrela-

tions in the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process and Nagel–Schreckenberg model, Phys. Rev. E 82 (7) (2010) 021107, arXiv:001.2081.

[3] D. Shteinman, S. Clarke, C. Chong-White, F. Johnson and G. Millar, Develop ment of a statis-tical framework to guide traffic simulation studies, Proceedings 17th Intelli gent Transport Systems

World Congress, Busan, Korea (2010), www.itsworldcongress.kr (accessed 26 August 2010).

[4] Extreme situations call for extreme theory. Australian Journal of Mining May/June 2010. On line at http://www.theajmonline.com.au/mining news/news/2010/may-jun-print-edition/ extreme-situations-call-for-extreme-theory (accessed 26 August 2010).

Reproduced from Gazette of Australian Mathematical Society, September 2010



An Interview with Terence Tao

Gazette: Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Tao: I was born here, in Australia, in 1975, in Adelaide. I grew up and stayed here in Adelaide for 16 years. When I was a kid, I was accelerated. I skipped five grades in primary school. This meant that I started high school at age 8. But I was already taking more advanced maths classes (Year 11), even when I was in primary school I took some high-school maths classes. And when I was at high school I took some maths classes at uni. My mother and father had to arrange this with the headmaster and the head of department, so it was very complicated. But it all worked out. When I got my Bachelor degree at Flinders University, Garth Gaudry, my advisor, recommended very strongly that I study abroad, so I went to Princeton and completed a PhD. My advisor in Princeton recommended I stay in the States. I’ve been with UCLA ever since, pretty much. Except I’ve spent a few summers in Australia, at ANU and UNSW.

Gazette: When you skipped all these grades, did you skip them in all disciplines or just maths?

Tao: It was staggered. At age 8 I was in Year 8 for things like English, PhysEd, etc. But for maths I was in Year 11 or 12.

Gazette: Did your parents encourage you to become a mathematician?

Tao: I think initially they were at a loss. They didn’t know what it was that you do as a mathematician. Once they realised that I liked maths more than physics, they were happy to let me do what I liked and I’m very grateful for that. They didn’t push me into something. In Asian cultures, there’s always a big pressure to do

something prestigious like medicine or law, but for some people this is not the best career. I’m happy that they didn’t mind that I liked maths.

Gazette: Are your parents still in Adelaide?

Tao: Yes. I’m staying with them while I’m here. It’s good to be back. Adelaide hasn’t changed much, and my parents haven’t changed much.

Gazette: Have you got any brothers and sisters?

Tao: I have two brothers, both younger than me. One is still in Adelaide and works for the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and the other is in Sydney and works for Google. It was his dream job. He lobbied quite hard. He even had a web page at one stage explaining why he should be hired by Google, with his resume, etc. It probably helped him getting the job. Google likes that kind of thing.

Gazette: Have you ever considered working for Google yourself?

Tao: Not really. I like academic maths too much. They do some interesting problem-solving but most of it is programming. I can program, but I’m not as good at that as I am at maths.

Gazette: What do you like most about academia?

Tao: I like academic freedom. You can work on your research, and it doesn’t have to be directed. It doesn’t have to be what your boss is telling you to do. It is very flexible. And I like teaching, when you get the students to learn something that they couldn’t see before. Their eyes light up: “Ah, I get it now”. And this makes you feel like you’re doing something very useful. I like the



culture: talking to other mathematicians. Everyone who does mathematics does it because they like math-ematics. They are not doing it for the money.

Gazette: Do you do much teaching?

Tao: Nowadays I mostly teach graduate courses. I also have my own graduate students, six graduate PhD students. They are quite mature. I’ve been gone all month now, and they’ve been looking after themselves. So they’ve just sent me an email with feedback for the last three weeks of what they have done. That’s great. In my students I look for someone who is independent and mature and hard-working. As long as they have some sense of mathematics, they don’t have to be amazing. They can always pick this stuff up later.

Gazette: Did you always like maths?

Tao: Yes, ever since I can remember. My parents tell me that at age 2 I was trying to teach other kids how to count using number blocks. Although as a kid I had a different idea of what mathematics was than I do now. I thought it was always puzzles and games. I didn’t really understand why we do mathematics until a lot later. I certainly enjoyed doing the abstract. I also enjoyed doing arithmetic.

Gazette: Do you still like doing puzzles?

Tao: Not so much. I think I get enough of it at work.

Gazette: What made you choose to study maths at school or uni?

Tao: It was what I enjoyed doing. As I said before, I really liked solving puzzles. I really liked it when the rules were very clear: what was right and what was wrong. So I had a lot of trouble with English. English was the subject I couldn’t get the point of. “Write whatever you feel like?” – what does that mean?

Gazette: Have you ever considered doing anything else?

Tao: When I was a kid I didn’t know what maths research was. I thought there was someone who gave you problems to do and you do them, like a giant homework project. When I was told you have to come up with your own research problems, I had no idea. How does anyone do that? I remember thinking I’d be a shopkeeper. This was something I understood. You could have inventory, and you’d buy things and keep a record. That seems to make sense. I’ve done a little bit of consulting for government agencies. This was nice, but I do like the academic environment much better.

Gazette: Why do you do mathematics?

Tao: It is rewarding. When you discover something and it makes sense, you can explain it to other people. You get this good feeling, like when you solve a cross word puzzle. You didn’t understand it before, now you do. You feel smarter. You’ve really made some achievement. I really like the fact that you can always build on what you did before and on what other mathematicians did before. It’s not like fashion for example, where each year you do something very different from the previous year. I’ve only been doing research mathematics for 15 years, but I can see how much the fields I’ve been working in have advanced and how our tools are getting better. It’s great to be part of this progress.

Gazette: You’ve contributed quite a bit!

Tao: Not just me. There are a lot of really good mathema-ticians out there. Every time there’s a breakthrough it’s great to hear about. I’m talking at the plenary lecture here about Perelman’s work on the Poincare Conjecture. It’s a really great achievement, and I had nothing to do with it!

Gazette: Is it difficult to combine the life of a Fields Medal winner with family life with your son and wife?

Tao: The Fields Medal doesn’t impress them. It is a big deal in mathematics and right after I got it there was some media attention. But 99% of people in the world have not heard of the Fields Medal. And even if they did, Los Angeles has so many celebrities, I think it wouldn’t be a big deal. This is one reason why I like living in LA, I can be anonymous — no-one cares. I wouldn’t want to be a celebrity anyway. I give a public lectures, say 500 people show up, and I sometimes wonder if they show up because they want to learn some maths or if a lot of them just come because they’ve heard that’s this famous person. A little bit of this is good, but being a celebrity shouldn’t be the main aspect of yourself. You should focus on the content.

Gazette: Has the medal changed your life in any way? Are you busier than ever?

Tao: I was already busy, and I’m still busy. I’m just busy in slightly different ways. It means that I get in-vited to more events. And I do feel I have more of a responsibility of being a spokesperson or role mod-el for mathematics. I’ve noticed sometimes when I talk to other mathematicians, and I say something I didn’t really think carefully about and people take what I say off-hand much more seriously. “Oh, this is very deep”, if I’m making some simple observa-tion. Sometimes you have to watch what you say a bit more.



Gazette: You have developed into a spokesperson for mathematics in Australia.

Tao: Yes. I got a lot out of my education in Australia. I do feel like I want to give something back.

Gazette: What was the best career advice you have ever received?

Tao: Mostly people have led by example other than explicitly giving advice. I do remember one thing my advisor told me once, which was very useful. I was writing my first paper, and I put a little joke in it. I thought I was being smart. He took a look at me and said: “When you write a paper, this is something that will stay in the record for ever. Thirty years from now people will still read it. What you think is funny now, may not be funny thirty years from now”. He told me not to put jokes in my papers. Looking back, that was actually pretty good advice: don’t be a smart alec when you write. And it wasn’t a very good joke anyway.

Gazette: You’ve worked across so many areas. Is there a specific area you enjoy the most?

Tao: I find myself doing different things in different years. My work grows or ganically. If I find something interesting and I can make some progress, I follow that. At some point, I can’t proceed any further and something else is interesting instead. It depends a lot on who I talk to. Most of my work is joint with other people, from other fields and through them I learn what the interesting problems are. For example, right now I’m focusing more on number theory and combina torics and random matrices, but five years from now I’d be doing something very different. If there are problems that look like they are within reach of doing, and something that I really know may be useful, I really need someone in that area to talk to.

Gazette: Who are your main collaborators?

Tao: That keeps changing. Nowadays I work a lot with three people: Ben Green, a number theorist who works at Cambridge, Tamar Ziegler who is an ergodic theorist in Israel, and Van Vu who is a probabilist at Rutgers. When I worked in Australia, I worked with people at UNSW and ANU.

Gazette: What achievement are you most proud of?

Tao: I don’t really look back. I always have many things on my plate. You can solve one problem and feel great, and there are these other fourteen problems and you still can’t solve them.

Gazette: What did the Fields Medal mean to you?

Tao: My first reaction was “Wow”! There were some rumours that I would get it, but I didn’t think I would actually get it in 2006. I had talked to a friend of mine, another Fields Medalist, and he said he was notified in April. The meeting when they announce the winner is in July. April went past and they never called me. Then I got the call in May. The president of the IMU called and asked, “Is this Terence Tao?”. I said, “Yes”. He said, “Congratulations. You have won the Fields Medal”. I don’t remember what I said, but I was quite stunned. I wasn’t expecting it. I feel I have to live up to the standard of all the other Fields medalists. You become a representative of mathematics.

Gazette: Do you see a broader involvement in the Australian mathematical com munity as an important part of your role?

Tao: I try to help out where I can. I live in LA. A lot of what I know about the situation in Australia is second-hand. I have a lot of friends and contacts here [in Australia] of course. One good thing about coming here is that I can see it first-hand. I’m on the scientific advisory board of AMSI. I did meet with the Australian Olympiad team in Bremen this year. I’m an expat, and would much prefer if Australians based here [Australia] took a lead. But I’d help out where I can.

Gazette: Is there any advice you could give to early career mathematicians?

Tao: Doing mathematics is a long-term thing. I’ve had grad students who said, “OK, I’m doing my PhD, and at the end of the four years, I’ll have learnt every-thing I need to know, and I’ll be a leader in the field”. It doesn’t work that way! You have to work through undergraduate, and through graduate, and even after you finish, there is still a lot more to learn. Mathematics is huge. You have to keep pushing yourself and not be content with doing just one or two things and sit in this niche of mathematics and never venture out of it, if you want to really progress. I’d describe it as like running a marathon. You can’t just sprint right through it. You have to keep learning, and really enjoy doing mathematics. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t have the stamina to keep at it. But it is very rewarding if you keep at it.

Gazette: What are the differences between the situa-tions of mathematics in the US and in Australia?

Tao: There are a lot of differences. I think the



Australian high-school level is still a little bit better. It has its own problems, but the US system has been struggling a lot longer with the issues of not enough qualified maths teachers, which I guess is just begin-ning to happen now in Australia. I’ve taught both in Australia and the US and the Australian students are better prepared. In Australia, universities are mostly funded through the Government and they have to comply with Gov ernment directives. Their priorities are set by Government policies, for instance to increase enrolments. In the US, there are public and private universities. Even in the public universities, where the Government provides some funding to support student tuition, the running of it is left to the administration at university level. And much of the administration comes from academia. A lot of very good aca demics have decided to move into administration, so there are people there who really understand the value of research. There’s a bit less bureaucracy in the US. Universities don’t compete to get a certain level of students or of publications, they compete for general prestige. They want a good name to attract students. For this reason they value research more, and outreach and service. They don’t focus just on numbers, which unfortunately is the focus in Australia. Gazette: What direction would you like the AustMS go into?

Tao: They do a good job with the resources that they have. I’m very impressed with this meeting, it seems to be well organised. [I’d like to see] more outreach to high-school teachers or students. There are other

organisations that do that, of course. But that’s one thing we need – high-school students have no idea what mathematics really is. There’s the education afternoon at this conference, which is good, but maybe a bit more in that direction.

Gazette: Have you got any hobbies?

Tao: I used to. But since I’ve had a child, all my free time has gone away. First I had a wife, and certain hobbies started to become less and less important, and then the kid!

Gazette: Can you tell us something about your blog?

Tao: This is something I started two years ago. I used to just have a web page to keep updates on my papers. But then I decided to make it 21st century and make a blog. I’m really happy with the way it’s gone. I get a lot of comments. For example, all the talks I gave in Australia I put on the blog weeks before, and I’ve been getting feedback and corrections. It’s forced me to change my culture a little bit. I was always inclined to keep everything secret until it’s all published. It’s good for me, and a lot of people follow. It’s also a good way to tell people some news.

Gazette: You’ve published a book about your blog.

Tao: Actually, two books now. Every year, the idea is to take the mathematical content of the blog (http://terrytao.wordpress.com/) and turn it into a book. I put my lecture notes for the classes I teach on the blog, and they get corrected and proofread. I get to publish a book a year!

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1975. He has been a professor of mathematics at UCLA since 1999, having completed his PhD under Elias Stein at Princeton in 1996. Tao’s areas of research include har monic analysis, PDE, combinatorics and number the ory. He has received a number of awards, including the Salem Prize in 2000, the Bochner Prize in 2002, the Fields Medal and SASTRA Ramanujan Prize in 2006, the MacArthur Fellowship and Ostrowski Prize in 2007, and the Waterman Award in 2008. Terence also cur-rently holds the James and Carol Collins chair in mathematics at UCLA, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Australian Academy of Sciences (Corre-sponding Member), and the National Academy of Sci ences (Foreign member).

Terence TaoUCLA Department of Mathematics, Los Angeles [email protected]

This interview took place during the 2009 AustMS conference at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

Reproduced from Gazette of Australian Mathematical Society, September 2010



(Guangming Daily March 26, 2001)

This is the text of a talk given by Shiing-Shen Chern on December 18, 2000 at the opening ceremony of the International Mathematical Conference held to commemorate the 90th birthday of Hua Luogeng. The last two additional passages were given by Chern on March 9. To preserve the style of the original presentation, minimal editorial changes have been made to the text, and notes have been added. This is the first time that this article has made public. The original version was first published in chinese in Guanming Daily March 26, 2001. I had a friendship and connection with the late Mr Hua Luogeng that stretched over many years. I first met him 70 years ago on the campus of Tsinghua University at the start of classes in the fall of 1931. During those 70 years, we were at times in the same department and we were destined to have an enduring connection. He was born in 1910 and less than a year my senior.

I remember that when he first joined us in 1931, he had only graduated from junior high school, but his mathematics thesis had attracted much of our attention. Tsinghua was very different from other universities. Not only did it ask him to come but also offered him a position. It was very unusual for a university of that time to do so. Because of his academic background, his position was that of an “assistant” when he first came. At that time the Mathematics Department was called the Arithmetic Department and only became the Mathematics Department later. I was an “assistant lecturer” in the Arithmetic Department one year ago. The offices of the Arithmetic Department comprised 4 rooms and were situated on two sides of the corridor of a “Gong”(工)-shaped hall with two rooms on each side. On one side was the office of Mr Xiong Qinglai, Head of Department. I also had a table in another place and was his assistant lecturer. Another office had two tables, those of Mr Zhou Hongjing and Mr Tang Peijing. When Luogeng came, he shared my office table. Because I was made a “research student” in 1931, he became an assistant and was given the use of this table. Thus our relationship then was of one succeeding another.

Luogeng was an excellent mathematician and hence did not need the general prerequisite mathematical training. Very soon he was able to discuss the problems of mathematics on the same level with everyone else, with research students and even with lecturers. Though

he was officially an assistant, he was, in effect, a research student. I was also a research student and we interacted with each other often and attended the same classes. It was an extremely happy period of my student life.

I should add that Tsinghua’s Arithmetic Department was a very small department at that time but it had a great influence on the development of arithmetic in China and constitutes an arguably significant chapter in the history of Chinese mathematics. Other than Mr Hua, our classmates at that time included Zhuang Qitai and Shih Xianglin (who later became professors at Peking University and Nanjing University respectively) and also classmates who would become professors at Nankai University. Though Tsinghua operated on a somewhat small scale at that time, it produced a considerable group who would exert some influence on Chinese mathematics. Later, Tsinghua expanded and invited foreign professors, not so much for the purpose of giving seminars as for socialising and showing a few transparencies. They would stay in Tsinghua for a year. The world renowned French mathematician Hadamard and the American Wiener came and gave lectures at Tsinghua. Such arrangements nowadays may not be easy. Starting on a small scale, Tsinghua was able to produce some positive effect on the development of mathematics in China.

In 1934 I left Tsinghua upon graduation and went to Germany for further studies. In 1936 Luogeng went to Cambridge University in England to work with the great mathematician Hardy. He took the Trans-Siberia railway from Beijing to Berlin. I was in Hamburg at that time and so we met in Berlin in the summer of 1936. Coincidentally, the [Summer] Olympics were held in Berlin that year, and Hitler was at the stand. Interestingly, the fastest runner in the 100-metre sprint and 200-metre sprint was a black man [the American Jesse Owens]; this was a big blow to Hitler. Regrettably, the Chinese team did not perform well in the Berlin Olympics. The most well-known team member was the swimmer Yang Xiuqiong, but she did not get any award. The highest ranked member Fu Baolu was in pole vault, but he also did not get any medal. In contrast, China has now made great strides and her athletes have achieved glorious results in international Olympics. I think that similarly China has the potential in mathematics but mathematics requires more time [for development]. Luogeng and I would watch the Olympics as well as discuss a lot of things.

Hua Luogeng and IShiing-Shen Chern



After the 1936 Olympics, I went to Cambridge and was together with Luogeng. His work at that time was in analytic number theory, and its most important tool was the “circle method”. It is strange that though number theory is about the properties of integers, it needs complex variables to unravel the deep properties of integers. The connection between complex variables and prime numbers is mysterious and fascinating. Luogeng has done much work in this area to which he has made contributions. He applied the circle method to the Waring Problem and the Tarry Problem. One of the main contributors to the circle method is the Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan, and the first paper on it was a paper by Hardy and Ramanujan. A very big advance was next made by the Soviet Union mathematician Vinogradov. Luogeng made much improvements and advances on Vinogradov’s method. His own work on the estimation of trigonometric sums was a significant contribution. I believe that Luogeng made his deepest contributions to mathematics during his stay in Cambridge from 1936 to 1938. His contributions to analytic number theory were numerous.

When he returned to China in 1938, the Sino-Japanese War had begun. Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University were then grouped together in Kunming as the South-West United University (SUU). As a professor of Tsinghua, he was a staff of the SUU. Nowadays we like to complain about facilities being inadequate or support inadequate. In fact, at that time we had nothing, even the existing books were all packed in boxes. Since we did not know when we would have to move again, the library staff was reluctant to unpack the boxes. However, in spite of those circumstances, we had a high spirit and good disposition and there was camaraderie at the SUU in Kunming. For example, we held a seminar with Mr Wang Zhuxi of the Physics Department, in 1940 or so. The SUU at that time produced some outstanding students like Wang Xianzhong, Zhong Kailai, Yan Zhida, Wang Hao, and Wu Guanglei. Thus, if we have the people and this spirit, we can still do many things even if the environment is a little unfavourable.

I was with Luogeng [in Kunming] for about five years from 1938 to 1943. When our group first went to Kunming, we did not have any place to stay. Because the original school was not at that place, we had to “borrow” the rooms of a middle school. The school was very generous and offered some rooms for SUU staff to stay in temporarily. So professors like Hua Luogeng, Wang Xinzhong and I stayed in one room (Wang was an expert on Japanese history). Each of us had a bed, a desk, a bookcase and a chair. So the room was rather congested, but life was purposeful. Even before we got out of bed, we would joke with each other. Although

there were material hardships, life was nevertheless purposeful. Nowadays, we wish for unceasing material progress, but I think that there is joy amidst hardship.

In the summer of 1943, I went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, while Luogeng remained in Kunming. However, we wrote to each other often. When the war effort was victorious and the country was rebuilding itself, I knew that he would be involved in various societal activities. We would only meet in Shanghai in 1946. I had then just returned from the US and he was about to go to US on official business. But we still managed to talk a fair bit of mathematics; our mathematical interests had become closer. In 1950 I left for the US and was at the University of Chicago while he was at the University of Illinois, which was quite nearby. He once came to the University of Chicago to lecture on an elementary proof of the Brauer–Cartan–Hua Theorem; it was a beautiful proof. He returned to China in the summer of 1950. He had to pass through Chicago in order to board a ship at San Francisco. We all admired his deep patriotism. When we parted company this time, our two worlds would become worlds apart with hardly any mutual contact. I would only know about some of his activities through the occasional media reports about him.

It was not until 1972 when I was invited by the Chinese Academy of Sciences that we met again in Beijing after a hiatus of 22 years. It was like a dream as we reminisced the past. In 1980 he led a team to the US. When he passed through Berkeley, he stayed at my place for two days. We chatted like in the old days; it was a happy time. In 1983 he visited the California Institute of Technology. I then drove over 400 miles from Berkeley to visit him. That was our last meeting.

Translated by Y.K. LeongJanuary 17, 2011

Shiing-shen Chern (left) and Hua Luogeng (right).



After an academic career lasting for over 40 years, Derek retired from his position as Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Otago in early

2009. During that time he published about 130 papers on mathematics and mathematics education; about 20 books ranging from school texts to popular books on mathematics to tertiary texts; about 20 chapters in books, largely involving research into aspects of mathematical education; and about 90 articles for teachers and students on mathematics.

He participated actively in the training of New Zealand International Mathematical Olympiad teams and was New Zealand’s IMO Team Leader for several years between 1988 and the turn of the century. He was involved in the mathematics curriculum at the national level, and chaired the Numeracy Projects Reference Committee and initiated, with Gill Thomas and Joe Morrison, the web site www.nzmaths.co.nz.

First Problem Set

Problems 1.1: A solitaire game is played with a rectangular set of pieces on a rectangular board. The player is allowed to remove pieces by jumping pieces over neighbouring pieces into an empty square of the board (as in the game Chequers). The jumped piece is removed from the board. Some of these moves are shown below — I have not included the symmetrically opposite moves.

It should be noted that, for any fixed array of pieces, the board is always big enough to allow any of these moves at any time during play.

Now a player wins if she can reduce the numbers of pieces to one by the moves above. But it’s a special win if the last piece ends up on its original square of the board. In this case the last piece is called a fixed

Problem Corner

Over the next few newsletters I have been given the job of coming up with three problems. I’ll do my best to make them interesting but

it will be hard to always make them totally new. I will acknowledge any source I know in the following news-letter. I’ll hope you’ll get some pleasure out of tackling them and to increase the pleasure World Scientific has agreed to give three book prizes. One book each will be awarded to the first correct answers to any of the

survivor. Given a 16 by 17 rectangular array, is it possible for

there to be a fixed survivor?

Problem 1.2: To continue the theme above, place a 3 by 3 array of pieces on the usual 8 by 8 board. The pieces can move as in Problem 1.1 but this time no pieces are taken from the board. The 9 pieces are initially in the bottom left-hand corner of the board. Is it possible for the pieces to be moved to (a) the bottom right-hand 3 by 3 sub board of the board; or (b) the top right-hand 3 by 3 sub board?

Problem 1.3: Using only functions that are known to secondary students, find the equation of the square with vertices (1, 0), (0, 1), (-1, 0), (0, -1).

problems; a second book will go to the first correct answer to either of the other two problems; and the final book will be given to the “nicest” solution of any of the three problems.

Before I give the first set of problems, let me say that I would be glad to see your problems too. Please send in your favourite problem with a solution and I’ll run an acknowledged set of readers’ problems along with mine.

Derek Holton



The Chern Institute of Mathematics (CIM) at Nankai University, Tianjin, China was founded by Prof. Shiing-Shen Chern in 1985. CIM is a

research institute opening to mathematicians from inside China and overseas. Its goal is to promote the mathematical research in China, improve communi-cations between mathematicians inside and outside China, and contribute to the developments of the pure and applied mathematics. The current academic committee of CIM consists of 25 well known math-ematicians from universities and research institutes in China. CIM has also built close relationships with many mathematical institutes in the world.

Since 1985, CIM has organised many academic activities including academic years, international conferences and workshops in various fields and on different topics, and trained a large number of young mathematicians. Continuing the tradition, currently each year CIM holds about 10–14 mathematical activi-ties. Participants include many experts and students from whole China. Every year CIM supports also many academic visitors from the whole China as well as abroad to CIM to do researches. In 2010, Chern Insti-tute has held so far the following nine conferences and workshops successfully in the mathematical sciences.

Altogether more than 650 mathematicians have joined these activities. The participants came from US, UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Japan, Korea and China, etc. Those activities have brought together experts around the world in the related area to report recent progresses and discuss further developments.

Chern Institute of Mathematics

They have stimulated exchange and cooperation between experts and young researchers from diverse mathematical fields. The organisers received much positive feedback on the quality and accessibility of the lectures and discussions.

Further information on activities of CIM can be found at www.cim.nankai.edu.cn.

Chern Centennial ConferenceThe Chern Institute of Mathematics (CIM), in collabora-tion with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, USA, organizes Chern Centennial Conference to commemorate the birth of Shiing-Shen Chern, one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century and CIM's founder. This conference will take place at CIM during 24–28 October 2011; and at MSRI the following week (30 October–5 November). For more details, visit http://www.nim.nankai.edu.cn/activities/conferences/Chern-Centennial-20111024/index.htm

Hongqin Li & Yiming Long

Conference Date Participants Main Organisers

1 Sino-German Workshop on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations and Applications Apr 5–9, 2010 80 Hua Chen

2 International Conference on Symplectic Geometry and Physics May 17–21, 2010 100 Yiming Long, Yongbin Ruan,

Gang Tian

3 International Conference on Representation Theory and Harmonic Analysis Jun 6–11, 2010 60 Jingsong Huang, Zixin Hou,

Ke Liang

4 International Conference on Finsler Geometry Jun 21–25, 2010 60 Xiaohuan Mo, Zhongmin Shen, Yibin Shen, Shaoqiang Deng

5 Operads and Universal Algebra Jun 28–Jul 9, 2010 70 Chengming Bai, Molin Ge, Li Guo, J. L. Loday

6 Summer School on Mathematical Economics and Finance Jul12–Aug 6, 2010 130 Shige Peng,

Ivar Ekeland, Yiming Long7 Summer School for Dynamical Systems Aug 9–20, 2010 85 Chungen Liu

8 Joint Workshop of AIM–CIM on Geodesics Aug 22–28, 2010 35 Victor Bangert, Yiming Long

9 Categorical Methods in Geometry and Gauge Theory Aug 29–Sep 3, 2010 60 Chengming Bai, Ugo Bruzzo

Some recent conferences held at CIM:



Two of the premier institutes of India, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR),

have jointly agreed to collaborate to establish a National Centre for Mathematics (NCM) in the premises of IIT Bombay. The two institutes will enter into a Memo-randum of Understanding (MoU) for an initial period of ten years to facilitate the establishment of NCM.

Mumbai has the largest concentration of math-ematicians in India with majority of them at TIFR, IIT Bombay and Mumbai University. IIT Bombay and TIFR are therefore, in a unique position to establish a National Centre for Mathematics. The institutes possess well-developed mathematics departments with international reputation. Moreover, faculty members in these two departments have strong research groups who will help organise various programmes of the Center throughout the year.

NCM will be modelled largely on the famous Oberwolfach Mathematics Research Institute (MFO), Germany that started in 1944 and played an important role in re-establishing Germany as a leading nation in mathematics, post the Second World War. There are about 50 week-long international workshops and conferences per year at Oberwolfach. NCM aims to have workshops, conferences, instructional

schools year-round for students, young teachers and researchers.

Professor Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT Bombay said, “Research and advanced education in Mathematics are vital for the development of science and industry in India. The National Centre for Mathematics, which we are establishing today, together with TIFR will contribute to these by conducting workshop and conferences, drawing upon the expertise of leading scholars from India and abroad. We hope that the centre will become a vibrant hub for discussion of new ideas, will catalyse research and a vehicle to promote collaborative research.”

Dr Mustansir Barma, Director, TIFR said, “Math-ematics and its applications are vital for the progress of our country. We hope and expect that the National Centre for Mathematics will make a useful contribution to the mathematical life of the scientific community in various ways, ranging from conducting research conferences at the highest level, to conducting training programs for PhD students as well as for scientists and engineers engaged in applications of mathematics. The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) shares these goals with IIT Bombay, and looks forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with IIT Bombay in setting up and running this joint Centre.”

TIFR and IIT Bombay sign MoU to setup The National Centre for Mathematics

About TIFR

Established in 1945, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research today is a multi-disciplinary institute engaged in research in frontline areas of the fundamental sciences. TIFR is recognised as the National Centre of the Government of India for Nuclear Science and Mathematics and has played a key role in the development of the basic sciences in the country. The work done here has had a high impact both nationally and internationally. Several of our staff members have been bestowed prestigious awards such as Padma Shri, Shanti Swarup Bhatanar Prize, Swarnajayanti Fellowship, the TWAS Prize and Fellowship of the Royal Society, London, to mention a few. Apart from its main campus at Mumbai, TIFR has three National Centres in different parts of India engaged in research on the biological sciences, radio astrophysics and science education; a new Centre on theoretical sciences is presently under construction at Bangalore. Further, work is on towards the establishment of a large new campus of TIFR in Hyderabad, with an initial thrust on interdisciplinary sci-ence and an emphasis on the training of young scientists. TIFR offers an attractive programme leading to the PhD degree.

About IIT Bombay

IIT Bombay, the second IIT to be set up in 1958, is recog-nised worldwide as a leader in the field of engineering edu-cation and research. It is reputed for the quality of its faculty and the outstanding calibre of students graduating from its undergraduate and post graduate programmes. The institute has a total of 15 Academic Departments, nine Centres, one Schools and three Interdisciplinary Programmes. Over the last five decades, more than 37,000 engineers and scientists have graduated from the institute. It is served by more than 495 faculty members considered not only amongst the best within the country, but is also highly recognised in the world for achievements in the field of education and research. Nine Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar awardees, 31 INAE (Indian National Academy of Engineering) awardees, two INAE Young Engineer awardees, 17 INSA (Indian National Science Academy) awardees, one Young Scientist awardee, 21 NAS (National Academy of Sciences) awardees, 19 IAS (Indian Academy of Sciences) awardees and seven Swarnajayanti fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the institute.



The Beijing International Centre for Mathemat-ical Research (BICMR) at Peking University is an institution funded by the central government

of China for the purpose of mathematical research, education and exchange. The centre was set up in 2005 by decree of national government. Its main office build-ings are located in several Chinese classical houses with gardens on the north shore of the famous Weimin Lake on the beautiful campus of Peking University. This used to be a part of the royal palace, Yuanmingyuan Palace.

BICMR’s mission is to conduct highest level research in all disciplines of mathematics; train a new generation of world-class mathematicians and provide a platform for exchanging mathematical ideas and results. BICMR serves the mathematical community both inside and outside China. It also encourages women and minority mathematicians to engage in mathematics. BICMR runs its academic activities either inde-pendently or in association with other institutions, especially with the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University. Each year, BICMR hosts more than 200 mathematicians from all over the world. The center sets up the Advisory Committee, the Scientific Committee and the Executive Committee. The Advisory Committee provides the guidance for the development of BICMR. The Scientific Committee is in charge of the talents recruitment and academic activities. The Executive Committee is responsible for the daily work in the Centre.

Scientific staff:Director: Gang TianDeputy Directors: Jiping Zhang, Weinan E, Changping Wang

Faculty and their research areas:

Wei Cai, Advanced algorithms and engineering simula-tions in electrical, optical and biological systemsWeinan E, Applied mathematicsHuijun Fan, Symplectic geometry, mathematical physicsYizhi Huang, Representation theory, mathematical physics

Ming Jiang, Biomedical imaging, image reconstruction, image processingXiaobo Liu, Differential geometry, mathematical physicsGang Tian, Geometric analysisJiajun Wang, TopologyChangping Wang, Differential geometryJiping Zhang, Groups and representation theoryXiaohua Zhu, Differential geometry, geometric analysisXiao-Hua Andrew Zhou, Diagnostic medicine, categorical data analysis, health services research, etc

BICMR Scientific Committee

Honorary Chairmen

Steve Smale: City University of Hong KongAndrew Wiles: Princeton University

Chairman

Gang Tian: Peking University & Princeton University

Members (in alphabetical order)

John Ball: Oxford UniversityJean-Michel Bismut: University of Paris XI, FranceWeinan E: Princeton University & Peking UniversityPhillip Griffiths: IAS, Princeton UniversityMartin Groetschel: Berlin UniversityLei Guo: Chinese Academy of Mathematics and Systems ScienceAnmin Li: Sichuan UniversityJianshu Li: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology & University of MarylandAndrei Okounkov: Princeton University & Columbia UniversityShige Peng: Shandong UniversityTao Tang: Hong Kong Baptist UniversityEnge Wang: Peking UniversityEfim Zelmanov: University of California San DiegoWeiping Zhang: Nankai University

Beijing International Centre for Mathematical Research



ICMAugust 19, 2010 is an important date in the

history of Indian mathematics. It was the day on which the President of India inaugurated

the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in the city of Hyderabad. The ICMs have a hundred-year-old history: since the first Congress was held in Zurich in 1897, they have been held regularly every four years except for breaks during the two world wars. India was holding it for the first time (and it was only the third time that an Asian country was hosting this most prestigious of mathematical events).

The Indian bid to hold the Congress was initiated by the National Board for Higher Mathematics (NBHM), an agency set up by the Government of India for the promotion of mathematics in the country. A Provisional Organising Committee (POC) consisting of some 30 members, most of them mathematicians, drawn from all over the country was formed (by NBHM) before submitting the bid. A subcommittee of the POC prepared the bid and designed a logo for ICM 2010. The logo is a depiction of the standard fundamental domain for the modular group acting on the upper half plane with the famous Ramanujan conjecture written along the rim of the unit circle.

The Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) recommended the accept-ance of India's bid to the General Assembly (GA) of the IMU held at Santiago de Compostela, Spain in August 2006 and the GA endorsed it. The Government of India's enthusiastic support expressed in a letter from the Indian Prime Minister to the President of the IMU welcoming the holding of the ICM in India and an informal pledge of financial support to the tune of 40 million Rupees by the Department of Atomic Energy

International Congress of Mathematicians 2010

(DAE) of the Government of India were perhaps crucial to our winning the bid.

Immediately after this, the Indian Organising Committee started on the organisational work in earnest. A compact subcommitee of the Organising Committee — the “Executive Organising Committee” (EOC) — was set up to ensure efficient functioning. The members of the Committee were: M S Raghunathan (Chair), S G Dani (Vice Chair), Rajat Tandon (Secre-tary), T Amarnath (Treasurer), R Balasubramanian, S Kesavan, S Kumaresan, Gadadhar Misra, P Mukherjee, R N Puri, G Rangarajan, Rahul Roy and Dinesh Singh.

Several subcommittees were formed and assigned specific responsibilities. The subcommittees always had some members of the EOC on them. The Editorial Committee for the Proceedings of the Congress was chaired by Rajendra Bhatia. An EOC member of each of the committees (other than the Editorial Committee) was given the charge of implementing the decisions taken by the Committee.

The first task taken up by the Organising Committee was to ensure that adequate funding will be available for the Congress. DAE made a firm commitment to provide sixty million Rupees for the Congress, thereby becoming the principal sponsor of the ICM. The IMU provided four million Rupees. The Department of Science Technology was approached to fund a project under which some twenty satellite meetings were to be supported and also some 1,000 Indian mathematicians and students could be fully supported for participa-tion in the Congress. Approaches were also made to corporate organisations as well as individuals. Among the major contributors were Shri R Thyagarajan of Chennai who donated six million Rupees and Shri

Madabusi S Raghunathan



Narayanamurthy of Infosys who, apart from a cash grant of two million Rupees, made available the excellent guesthouse run by Infosys in Hyderabad free of cost. More than 500 of the delegates were accom-modated in the guesthouse.

Next the EOC held discussions with the Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad who kindly agreed to the proposal by the EOC that the University undertake the organisation of the ICM as a project to be implemented under the direction of the EOC. The principal sponsor DAE also accepted this arrangement and the funds for the organisation of the ICM were released to the University as and when required.

The Chair H W Lenstdra of the Programme Committee appointed by the IMU EC provided the EOC with the list of invited plenary and sectional speakers and also the panel participants in March 2009. Invitations were sent out by M S Raghunathan (Chair EOC) in April 2009. All invited sectional speakers were offered free registration and were requested to submit the absracts and texts of their talks by March 15, 2010. The plenary speakers and panelists were requested to submit abstracts by that date and manuscripts by July 15, 2010. About ten invitees declined and were replaced by other names by the Programme Committee. The IMU EC also wanted two additional lectures in the programme: the Abel Lecture sponsored by the Norwegian Academy to be given by S R S Varadhan, the 2006 Abel Laureate and the Noether Lecture to be given by Idun Reiten and these were included in the programme.

The European Women in Mathematics approached the EOC for support to organise a two-day meeting focusing on contributions of women to mathematics to be held just ahead of the ICM in Hyderabad.* The EOC responded favourably to the request and formed a local organising committee chaired by Shobha Madan of IIT Kanpur for the purpose. The EOC also extended financial support of two million Rupees for organising the meeting which was given the name International Congress of Women Mathematicians. It was to be held during August 16–18, 2010 at the University of Hyderabad.

It is a long tradition that the prestigious Fields Medals instituted by the IMU are given away at the inaugural function of the ICM by the Chief Guest. The prizes instituted later, the Nevanlinna Prize and the Gauss Prize are also given to the winners by the Chief Guest on this occasion. The IMU EC informed the EOC that a new prize called the Chern Prize was being instituted and was also to be given away for the first time at the inaugural function of the ICM in Hyderabad. The EOC approached the President of India, Shrimathi Prathibha Devisingh Patil with the request that she inaugurate the ICM on August 19, 2010 and give away the Prizes. The President accepted the EOC's invitation and the inaugural function was held at 11 am on August 27, 2010.

The President was received on her arrival at the venue by S Hasnain (Vice Chancellor, University of Hyderabad), Laszlo Lovasz and M S Raghunathan. Also seated on the dais were the Governor and the

*See a separate report on this meeting in page 37.

All the prize winners for a photograph with President of India, Governor of Andhra Pradesh & Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.



Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Martin Grotschel (Secretary, IMU), Laszlo Lovasz, M S Raghunathan, S Hasnain, Louis Nirenberg (the recipient of the Chern Medal Award), and Rajat Tandon.

The proceedings began with the playing of the national anthem. Raghunathan welcomed the President, other dignitaries and the delegates to the Congress. Lovasz then addressed the gathering as the President of the IMU. This was followed by the President of India giving away the prizes after Grotschel announced the composition of each of the prize committees followed by the name of the prize winner and the citation. Altogether seven prizes were given away: four Fields Medals, Nevanlinna Prize, Gauss Prize and Chern Prize. The President then addressed the gathering. She spoke on India's long engagement with mathematics and its active role in international cooperation. She offered congratulations to the prize winners and welcomed the delegates wishing them a pleasant and fruitful stay in India. The Chief Minister also extended his welcome to the delegates. Rajat Tandon proposed the vote of thanks. The function ended with the playing of the national anthem again. The programme was conducted by Chandna Chakraborthy.

The inaugural function continued after the Presi-dent left when Lovasz and Martin briefed the delegates about the various initiatives connected with the ICNS taken by the EC since the previous congress in Spain in 2006. The passing away of V Arnold and H Cartan who were both involved with IMU activities in the past was observed with condolences. Raghunathan was named President of ICM 2010 by Lovasz. The meeting ended with a brief reply by Raghunathan.

In the afternoon, there were laudations of the Fields Medallists: H Furstenberg was the Laudator for E Lindenstrauss, J Arthur for Ngo Bao Chau, H Kesten for S Smirnov and H T Yau for C Villani.

This was followed by the laudation for the Nevan-linna Prize winner D Spielman by G Kalai. The academic programme for the day ended with the Abel Lecture by Varadhan. K R Parthasarathy was in the chair. In the evening the EOC hosted a dinner in honour of the invited speakers. The three hundred odd invitees were people involved in the organisation of the ICM.

On the second day, there were special sessions (9 am to 12:30 pm) devoted to the Gauss and Chern Prizes. There was a talk on the work of Yves Meyer, the Gauss Prize winner by Ingrid Daubechies. The session on the Chern Prize was more elaborate. There was a talk about Chern's work and a video film on him was also shown. May Chu, Chern's daughter spoke about her father. Yan

Yan Li spoke on the work of Louis Nirenberg, the (first) Chern Prize winner.

In the evening, there was an Indian Classical Dance Programme by Nrityashree, a dance troupe led by a renowned Baharat Natyam dancer Professor C V Chandrasekhar. The dance-drama titled “Panchama-habhuthangal” was a depiction through dance of the functioning of the five “bhutas”—Bhumi (earth), Jalam (water), Akasha (sky), Vayu (air) and Agni (fire). Later in the evening, the EOC also hosted a dinner at Shilpa Kala Vedika for all the delegates and accompanying persons.

From the third day onwards, there were four plenary lectures each day from 9 am to 2:45 pm with a break for lunch. The 1:45 pm to 2:45 pm slot was exclusively reserved for lectures by the Fields Medallists and the Nevanlinna Prize winner. As many as 8 parallel sessions were held for the sectional talks and the contributed papers/posters. The 45-minute sectional talks were held from 3 pm to 6:30 pm. The plenary and sectional talks were chaired by distinguished mathematicians, most of them were from India.

The EOC organised a chess event on August 24. Viswanathan Anand, the world chess champion played simultaneous chess against 40 delegates. (A month before the event on-line application was open for delegates desirous of playing against Anand. Forty delegates were chosen on a first-come first served basis. There was a fee of 4,000 Rupees.) Except for a solitary draw by a 14-year-old, Anand won all the other games. Each player received a box of chessmen and the board on which he or she played autographed by Anand. Other spectators could also collect Anand's autographs after the event.

Another cultural event organised by the EOC was a performance of the play “A Disappearing Number” by the well known theatre company Complicite of London. The play was performed on two consecutive days August 21 and 22. It was open to the general public of Hyderabad, but the delegates could book their tickets on-line a week ahead of the public. It was performed at the Global Peace Auditorium and both shows were sold out.

On August 25, there was a Classical Hindusthani music concert by Ustad Rasheed Khan, one of India's great exponents. EOC had also organised two lectures on music appreciation by Sunil Mukhi on August 22 and 24 for the benefit of the delegates who may be unfamiliar with Indian music.

In June 2010 the EOC instituted a one-time inter-national prize called the “Leelavati Prize” (with a value



of one million Rupees) for public outreach work for mathematics. Nominations for the prize were sought from mathematical societies around the world and also from mathematics departments of many universities and research institutions. The Prize Committee chaired by M S Narasimhan awarded the prize to Simon Singh, citing among other things the book as well as the documentary film he had produced on Fermat's Last Theorem. Singh gave a public lecture on August 25 on the making of the documentary.

There were several panel discussions all of which were held during the late afternoons.

In the morning of the August 27, Idun Reiten gave the Noether Lecture, chaired by Claire Voisin. The closing ceremony was held in the afternoon. At this ceremony, on behalf of the International Commission on History of Mathematics, Kim Plofker handed the 2009 Kenneth O'May Prize for History of Mathematics to R C Gupta, the first Indian to be awarded this prestigious prize.

Lovasz handed the Leelavati Prize to Simon Singh. Lovasz also announced that Ingrid Daubechies will take over from him as President of the IMU from January 2011. It was also announced that a permanent

Madabusi S Raghunathan

secretariat for the IMU was being set up in Berlin. It was also formally announced that Korea would host the 2014 Congress in Seoul. The Korean delegation was congratulated by those on the dais and the Korean delegate on the dais extended a warm welcome to all present to ICM 2014. The meeting ceremony ended with a vote of thanks by Rajat Tandon.

The Norwegian, German, French, Korean and Viet-namese embassies and the Canadian High Commission held receptions during the Congress: The US National Committee and the London Mathematical Society as well as the Indo–French Institute for Mathematics also hosted receptions, mainly in honour of the prize winners and invited speakers. People involved in the organisation of the ICM were also invited.

Dr Ramachandran, a physicist turned journalist helped the EOC with publicity for the ICM during the run-up to the Congress as well as during the Congress itself. He ran a daily bulletin for the delegates during the Congress and which carried interviews with prize winners and other distinguished mathematicians. There was extensive coverage of the Congress by the media in general.

Madabusi S Raghunathan joined the School of Mathematics at the Tata Institute ofFundamental Research as a Research Scholar in 1960, and obtained his doctoratein January 1966. The same year he joined the Faculty at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. His principal contributions to mathematics are in the areaof Algebriac Groups and Discrete Groups. His book “Discrete Subgroups of Lie Groups” published in 1972 is now a standard reference work in the subject. In 1970 he gave one of the prestigious invited sectional talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice, France. Raghunathan is a Fellow of all the three national science academies in India and also of the Royal Society (London). He has also been actively engaged in promotional activities for mathematics. During 1983–2006, he was the Chairman of the National Board for Higher Mathematics, an apex body set up by the Government of India to oversee the development of mathematics; he continues to be a member of the board. He also served on the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union during 1999–2006. He retired in 2006 as Professor of Eminence from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, but continues to work there as the DAE - Homi Bhabha Professor.



The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) (www.awm-math.org) has now been in existence for close to 40 years, while the EWM

(European Women in Mathematics, www.european-womeninmaths.org) was conceived at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) held in Berkeley in 1986 (see the article by Caroline Series on the history of EWM). In 2008, the EWM Conference took place in Cambridge, UK where a few of us discussed the idea of spreading “Women in Mathematics” further eastwards, and Caroline Series was particularly supportive of the idea. ICM 2010 was to be held in Hyderabad, and given the emergence of the Asian conti-nent in science and technology in the recent decades, it seemed like an idea whose time had come. A conclave of women mathemati-cians with particular focus on encouraging women mathemati-cians and younger students from the developing countries and other Asian countries was planned, and it took final shape as the International Congress of Women Mathematicians (ICWM 2010), a two-day event that was held at Hyderabad on August 17–18, 2010, prior to the ICM.

The funding for this event came partly from the National Board for Higher Math-ematics, India, and the Schlumberger Foundation. The Central University of Hyderabad was the venue for the meeting. The local anchor of the Organising Committee, B. S. Padmavathy did a diligent job of ensuring the smooth coordination of the different events. As a run-up to this event, Riddhi Shah from the School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, had organised a three-day Inter-national Conference on “Advances in Mathematics: Focus on Women in Mathematics”, during October 5–7, 2009. There was a groundswell of enthusiasm created already then among the participants, for similar future events.

International Congress of Women Mathematicians 2010

The Local Organising Committee for ICWM 2010 consisted of Shobha Madan (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur), Chair, S. G. Dani (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai), Mahuya Datta (Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata), Jaya N Iyer (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai and University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), B. Sri Padmavati, (University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), Rahul Roy (Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi) and Geetha Venkata-raman (St. Stephen’s College, Delhi). The Scientific Committee consisted of Ulrike Tillmann (Oxford, UK), Chair, Viviane Baladi (ENS, Paris, France), Eva Bayer

(Lausanne, Switzerland), Chris-tine Bernardi (Paris VI, France), Christine Bessenrodt (Hannover, Germany), Antonella Grassi (U Penn, USA), Ursula Hamenstaedt (Bonn, Germany), Dusa McDuff (Stony Brook, USA), Ragni Piene (Oslo, Norway), Mythily Ramaswami (TIFR Bangalore, India), Sujatha Ramdorai (TIFR Mumbai, India), Vera Sos (Renyi Institute, Budapest, Hungary), Nina Uraltseva (St. Peters-burg, Russia), Michele Vergne (Ecole Poly-technique, Paris, France). The conference poster was well received.

The conference was inaugurated by Professor Syed Hasnain, Vice

Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, with the traditional lighting of the lamp. In the Indian cultural tradition, this simple act symbolises the dispelling of Darkness and Ignorance, and marks the ushering in of Light and Knowledge. This was indeed what followed in the lectures that were presented. The speakers and titles are as follows:

• Frances Kirwan (Oxford): Moduli spaces and quotient spaces in algebraic geometry.

• Neela Nataraj (IIT Bombay): Mixed continuous and discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods for biharmonic equation.

• R. Parimala (Emory): A Hasse principle for quadratic forms.

R. Sujatha



newsletter of the EWM for more details. It is globally recognised now that the decades ahead

will be part of “Asia’s Century”. Many Asian nations are rediscovering their intellectual vibrancy and given the healthy demography prevalent in Asia, we are bound to witness increasing numbers of women in science and technology and in research and academic careers. The IMU has just elected Ingrid Daubechies as its President, and Christiane Rousseau as its Vice President. ICM 2014 is going to be held in Seoul, Korea. Confluence of events in the years ahead augurs well for more cooperation between Asian countries and especially in forming networks for women mathematicians in Asian countries, which can develop organic links with other existing organisations. With the next ICME (International Conference of Mathematics Education) slated to be held in Seoul in 2012 as well, one hopes that the vision of an Eastern Sorority of Mathematicians gets realised soon. Can ICM 2014 formally herald the healthy birth of “Asian Women in Mathematics”? Through this nascent newsletter, the mathematics fraternity in Asia is kindly invited to make this event possible.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank B S Padmavathy, Beatrice Pelloni and Ulrike Tillmann for help with material in preparing this article.

• Nathalie Wahl (Copenhagen): Homo-logical stability for geometric groups.

• Julie Deserti (Universite de Paris 7): Some properties of the Cremona group.

• Mar yam Mirzakhani (Stanford): Dynamics over moduli spaces of surfaces.

• Yana Di (Chinese Academy, Beijing): Adaptive finite element methods for computational fluid.

• Mythili Ramaswamy (TIFRCAM, Banga-lore): Importance of weighted eigenvalue problems.

There was also a Poster Session with 33 exhibits that spanned recent research in diverse areas and topics such as mathematics education and popularisation. A dinner was organised on the evening of August 17, 2010. Another highlight of the meeting was the Round Table discussion held in the second session on the first day, on the subject “Women Mathemati-cians around the World”. This interesting discussion, conceived and planned by Caroline Series, was chaired by Beatrice Pelloni from Reading University, UK. The other panelists were Basabi Chakraborty (Japan), Rashida Adeeb Khanum (Pakistan), Marie FranÇoise Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso), Kyewon Koh Park (Korea), Sylvie Pacha (EWM), Vera Spinadel (Argentina), Geetha Venkataraman (India) and Carol Wood (AWM). The short presentations by the panelists brought into focus important statistics on the percentage of women mathematicians at different stages in their academic and research careers, and other specific social and cultural issues prevalent in different parts of the world in relation to women in academic careers. It was enlightening to hear varied women’s voices with some common themes related to their careers from nations across the globe. A lively and animated discussion, with wide participation from the audience, followed with some concrete ideas and suggestions evolving at the end of the session. We refer to Beatrice Pelloni’s report on the discussion in the 17th

Sujatha Ramdorai is a Professor of Mathematics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Bombay, India. Her research interests are in the areas of Iwasawa theory and the categories of motives. She

served as a Member of the National Knowledge Commission of India from 2007 to 2009. She is currently at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, on leave from TIFR.

R. Sujatha School of Maths TIFR, Mumbai, [email protected]

Panel Discussion. From left: Betrice Pelloni (UK), Vera Spinadel (Argentina), Motoko Kotani (Japan), Sylvie Pacha (France).

Carol Wood (USA) speaking at the panel discussion.



Overview

A global festival of mathematics, International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) will be held in August 13–21, 2014 in Seoul, Korea. It is held once every four years under the auspices of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) with over 4,000 mathematicians from all over the world. The Fields Medals — often called “Nobel Prizes in Mathematics” are given to mathematicians not over 40 years old, the Nevanlinna Prize, the Gauss Prize, and the Chern Medal are awarded during the congress’ opening ceremony. Each congress is memorialized by printed proceedings recording academic papers based on invited talks intended to reflect the current state of science.

The decision has been ratified at the 16th IMU General Assembly in Bangalore, India, in August 2010. And it is a glorious pleasure for the people of Korea that the most prestigious academic meeting in mathematics will take place in Seoul. The government, corporations and the mathematical community in Korea have great expectations for the coming congress and stand ready to provide all possible support for a successful congress.

Under the blessing and approval of the Korean Mathematical Society (KMS) Board, nine subcommit-tees of the Organising Committee (ICM-OC) have been formed to oversee various aspects of the organisation of SEOUL ICM 2014.

The ICM-OC is busy working to establish the Seoul ICM Travel Fellowship to invite 1,000 mathematicians from developing countries to Korea, many of whom would not have been able to visit an ICM otherwise, and will now stand to bring the ICM excitement and new knowledge back to their home countries. The potential positive impacts their experiences will have on future generations in their respective countries will be huge and will surely linger for many years to come. Within the IMU, the level of participation and activity of traditionally passive member countries is expected to increase, and a closer collaborative and harmonious mathematics community is likely to ensue.

Satellite Conferences are one of the most important scientific activities surrounding the celebration of ICM. There will be around 60 Satellite Conferences before and after the SEOUL ICM 2014. The ICM-OC expects to draw 60 scientific meetings and workshops on the occasion of SEOUL ICM 2014. About half of them will take place across the host country, and others will take place in neighbouring countries. And as part of the social programs, many cultural events prepared by the ICM-OC will make the visit to Korea more memorable.

Korea’s Efforts to Host ICM 2014 in Seoul

In 2006, three Korean mathematicians — Prof. Jeong Han Kim (Yonsei Univ., Korea and Microsoft Research, USA), Prof. Yong-Geun Oh (Univ. of Wisconsin Madison, USA and KIAS (Korea Institute for Advanced Study), Korea), and Prof. Jun-Muk Hwang (KIAS) — gave invited lectures at the Madrid ICM. In that year, Korea submitted an application to IMU for its IMU group level to be raised to Group IV. In 2007, IMU raised Korea’s group level to Group IV, making Korea the first country whose IMU group level has been raised by two steps at once.

With its newly gained confidence stemming from a series of accomplishments, the KMS has made the hosting of ICM 2014 a prime objective and all members are vigorously applying their energy to ensure that the society will continue to be fully recognised and acknowledged in the international world. Korea, despite a relatively short history in modern mathematical research, has made significant progress in quality and quantity of research in mathematics. In terms of 2008 SCIE publications in mathematics, it was ranked 11th in the world, more than doubling its publications in less than 10 years. Being a late starter, based on its own experience, the KMS understands the challenges met by mathematicians in many IMU member countries where mathematical research, by modern standards, has a relatively short history. Thus SEOUL ICM 2014 will have a positive impact on them in practical and symbolic ways.

International Congress of Mathematicians 2014



At the Hyderabad ICM 2010, two Korean math-ematicians — Prof. Jongil Park (Seoul National Univ., Korea) and Prof. Hee Oh (Brown Univ., USA and KIAS, Korea) — gave invited lectures, and the KMS and SEOUL ICM 2014 Organising Committee hosted a Korean Reception (Korean Math Night for SEOUL ICM 2014). Around 230 mathematicians including the IMU Executive Committee members, 2010 Fields medalists Elon Lindenstrauss, Ngô Bao Châu, Stanislav Smirnov, and Cédric Villani, presidents of the math-ematics societies around the world, and mathematicians from Korea have come to celebrate Korea’s successful bidding for the next ICM. Starting with the welcome speech by Prof. Dohan Kim (Seoul National Univ., Korea), the president of the KMS, Prof. Hyungju Park (POSTECH, Korea), the Chair of SEOUL ICM 2014 Organising Committee briefly introduced the status of the mathematics in Korea and described the concerted efforts to host ICM in Seoul in 2014.

Host City and Venue

Seoul is the capital of Korea in which the Han River flows through, from east to west, and is surrounded by great mountains, and the city contains both of history and tradition, as well as the latest IT technology, making it a kind of a city which is quite rare anywhere on the globe. All events of the congress will take place at the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Seoul.

Emblem

The logo for SEOUL ICM 2014 comprises of two golden spirals that grow and expand at the rate of golden ratio. It represents growth with math-ematical order, and symbolizes the dreams and hopes for the late starters. The S-shaped logo is reminiscent of the S in Seoul,

and also the “Tae-Geuk” image in the Korean flag that symbolises the harmony of Yin and Yang. The red color is Yang, love and passion. The blue color is Yin, intelligence and dream. The Yin & Yang, however, begin with the same color and shape, representing the oneness of the universe.

SEOUL ICM 2014 Homepage

The ICM-OC has newly opened the homepage of SEOUL ICM 2014, where pre-registration is now available. Those who pre-register at the homepage will receive periodic ICM e-news which will provide important dates and updated information about SEOUL ICM 2014.

For more information, please visit the homepage of SEOUL ICM 2014 (http://www.icm2014.org).

Overview

The 17th General Assembly (GA) of the IMU will take place in Gyeongju, Korea on August 10–11, 2014 prior to the SEOUL ICM 2014. The GA normally meets once in four years, usually at a place and date close to ICM, and consists of delegates appointed by the Adhering Organisations, together with the members of the Executive Committee and observers. Observers are persons whom the IMU President (with the approval of the Executive Committee) may invite to participate for purposes of consultation upon specific items on the GA agenda. Only delegates have voting rights. At the General Assembly of the IMU there will be a large number of important decisions to be made which will help shape the future of the Union. At every General Assembly, resolutions concerning the development of

General Assembly of the International Mathematical Union 2014

mathematics and international cooperation are made and published in the IMU Bulletin that appears directly after the General Assembly.

Host City

Gyeongju will be the location of the IMU GA in 2014. The history of Gyeongju dates back to ancient times when the city was the capital of the Silla Dynasty (BC 57–935), the longest period of reign in the history of Korea. Today, more than 1,000 years later, evidence of its rich cultural heritage is still evident in every corner of the city. Since the ancient relics are such an integral part of the area, the whole city has been designated as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage under the name “Gyeongju Historic Areas”. As such, Gyeongju is often referred to as a “roofless museum”.



Group photograph of all award recipients and award presenters.

The Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM), hosted by Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences,

and the Morningside Group, took place at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during December 17–22, 2010. Over 1,000 Chinese mathematicians from all over the world gathered to share their ideas on new results in mathematics during this triennial meeting. The Morningside Medal of Mathematics, the most pres-tigious prize for mathematicians of Chinese descent, was awarded during the opening ceremony. Yongxiang Lu (Vice Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Binglin Gu (President of Tsinghua University) addressed the conference during the opening ceremony. Prof. Shing-Tung Yau (Chairman of the ICCM and Director of the Tsinghua Mathematical Sciences) and Mr. Ronnie C. Chan (founder of the Morningside Group), the two persons who established the Morningside Medal of Mathematics, also delivered speeches. Mr. Hao Ping (Vice Minister of Education) presented the award to the winners.

Prof. Mu-Tao Wang (Columbia University) and Prof. Sijue Wu (Robert W and Lynne H Browne Professor, Michigan University) were awarded the Morningside Gold Medal of Mathematics. Sijue Wu received the medal for her outstanding contributions

to the global well-posedness of the two and three dimensional water wave problems. Mu-Tao Wang was cited for his important contributions in differential geometry and geometric partial differential equations. Sijue Wu became the first female mathematician to win the Morningside Gold Medal. Prof. Jun Liu (Harvard University) received the Morningside Gold Medal for Applied Mathematics, for his important work on Monte Carlo inference.

Recipients of the Morningside Silver Medal of Math-ematics were: Prof. Jung Kai Chen (National Taiwan University), Prof. Meng Chen (Fudan University), Prof. Jixiang Fu (Fudan University) and Prof. Juncheng Wei (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). Jung Kai Chen and Meng Chen achieved breakthrough in their joint research in the birational geometry of algebraic 3-folds. It was the first time for Morningside Medal of Mathematics to be awarded to collaborative researchers from the Mainland China and Taiwan. Each Morning-side medalist received a certificate, a medal and cash award of US$25,000 dollars for gold and US$10,000 dollars for silver.

Three mathematicians were awarded the Chern Medal. They were Jiaxing Hong (Director of Math-ematics Institute of Fudan University), Naichung Leung, Editor of New York Journal of Mathematics and Asian Journal of Mathematics (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Wenching Li (Director and Head

Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM 2010)



of the Mathematics Division of the National Center for Theoretical Sciences in Taiwan). Prof. Richard M. Schoen received the 3rd ICCM International Coop-eration Award for his contribution to the training of Chinese mathematicians.

In his welcoming speech, Binglin Gu mentioned that the Department of Mathematical Sciences in Tsinghua University had achieved great progress in recent years. The department had been the national first class key subject; it founded three national competitive courses, and obtained the National Prize for Natural Sciences and achieved the Top Ten Science and Tech-nology Progress Award of Chinese Universities. With the enthusiastic support from Prof. Shing-Tung Yau, Tsinghua University had established the Mathematical Sciences Center last year. Binglin Gu pointed out that ICCM2010 was also among one of the important activi-ties of Tsinghua University's centenary celebration.

Prof. Shing-Tung Yau said in his speech that it was really a grand meeting for Chinese mathematicians. As the Chairman of Selection Committee for Morningside Medal of Mathematics, he believed that the selection process was fair and objective, and all the medalists have produced extraordinary achievements in their respective fields.

In his speech, Prof. Yongxiang Lu congratulated the Morningside Medal of Mathematics which had stead-fastly developed and established itself for 12 years. He recalled that in 1998, Prof. Shing-Tung Yau, Mr. Ronnie C. Chan and he discussed the establishment and objective of the Morningside Medal of Mathematics, also known as the “Chinese Fields Medal” which was not only to award outstanding Chinese mathemati-cians, but also to serve as an encouragement to young mathematicians.

The gold and silver medalists were mathematicians under the age of 45 and have achieved exceptionally good accomplishment in pure and applied math-ematics, and were awarded during International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians which is the largest, most influential and important event for all Chinese mathematicians.

In addition to Chinese mathematicians, many presi-dents and deans from various world-class universities or institutes, leaders and experts from research insti-tutes in the fields closely related to mathematics such as physics, biology and statistics, etc., also attended the conference and delivered speeches. During December 18–22, many sessions of academic presentations and discussions on mathematical sciences were held in the

Tsinghua campus. Profs. Sijue Wu, Hongze Yao and five other outstanding mathematicians were invited to the “Morningside Seminar”. More than 30 mathematicians delivered keynote speeches and 200 mathematicians gave invited talks in 30 parallel sessions. The number of the participants for this congress was estimated to be 1,800.

A meeting was also held in honour of the 100th and 99th anniversaries of the birth of the renowned mathematicians Hua Luogeng and Shiing-shen Chern. Both of them have contributed significantly to the development and education of Chinese mathematics. The descendants of Hua Luogeng and Shiing-shen Chern also attended the meeting that was chaired by Zongkai Shi (Deputy Party Secretary of Tsinghua University).

Wang Yuan (Academy of Chinese Sciences) and Shing-Tung Yau affectionately recalled the lives and work of the two masters. Wang Yuan paid tribute to Hua Luogeng by saying, “In addition to his contributions to research, Mr. Hua made great efforts to train others. Forty or fifty scholars under his influence had become academicians now.”

According to Shing-Tung Yau, “My teacher Prof. Shiing-shen Chern made a profound impact on my career development and mathematical research.” E. Cartan, the grandfather of differential geometry, and Shiing-shen Chern, the father of modern differential geometry, together created a beautiful and rich subject which influenced every branch of mathematics and physics. Before his death, Chern said that he was going to meet with the great geometers of ancient Greece. Without any doubt, his achievements had put him on par with those great geometers.

Binglin Gu said at that meeting that both Hua Luogeng and Shiing-shen Chern were world famous mathematicians and respectable alumni of Tsinghua University. In addition to their great achievements in mathematics, they had contributed greatly to the development of mathematical sciences in Tsinghua University. During the past century, Tsinghua Univer-sity had achieved tremendous improvement of scientific knowledge and culture. Such achievements could only be possible due to the presence of renowned masters and scholars. He stressed the importance to inherit and develop this fine tradition, and learn from their noble characters, and to work hard to make Tsinghua University a first class university in the world.

Adapted from Tsinghua University News



On June 24, 2010 the Institute for Mathematical Sciences (IMS) of National University of Singapore (NUS) celebrated its 10th anniversary

in one full-day event with formal speeches, musical performance, video presentation and invited lectures, culminating in an informal appreciation dinner.

The day’s celebration began at 9.30 am in the Institute’s auditorium with a welcome speech by the Director, Louis Chen who revealed how the Institute was modeled after successful institutes like the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and the Newton Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

This was followed by a speech by the Chairman of the Institute’s Management Board, Chong Chi Tat. He gave a personal account of the long road he had travelled, both scientifically and physically, in search of an ideal model for an establishment for mathematical research activities within the National University of Singapore.

Next, the Chairman of the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board, Roger Howe of Yale University gave a historical and paradigmatic perspective of some of the achievements of the local mathematical community. He cited three important examples of research break-throughs and activities as evidence of the successful and positive role of the Institute in the mathematical development of Singapore.

In his speech as the guest of honour, the President of NUS, Tan Chorh Chuan showed an empathetic understanding of the mathematical mind and an

Tenth Anniversary of NUS Institute for Mathematical Sciences

appreciation of the mathematical spirit of enquiry. After the speeches were made, the Director

presented the President, with a token of appreciation – a copy of the commemoration volume Creative Minds, Charmed Lives consisting of interviews published in the Institute’s newsletter Imprints.

A musical performance of two compositions for the flute and harp by two budding musicians transformed the atmosphere of the auditorium for some intangible magical moments. A short video presentation then gave the audience an informative glimpse of the collective efforts that have contributed to the progress of the Institute.

The proceedings in the auditorium were witnessed by more than 90 participants, among them local dignitaries and distinguished scholars from overseas. A reception was held in the modest grounds of the Insti-tute for people to renew old ties or make new contacts.

The day’s celebration would have been incomplete without an intellectual offering to stimulate the mind. Three invited talks were given – one following the recep-tion and the other two in the afternoon after the lunch break. The invited speakers were Tony Chan (the recently appointed President of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Hugh Woodin of the University of California, Berkeley and Sun Yeneng of NUS.

A more detailed account of the celebration is available from Issue 17 of the IMS Newsletter “Imprints”, which may be accessed at http://www.ims.nus.edu.sg.

Group photograph at the 10th Anniversary of NUS IMS [photo in courtesy of IMS, NUS and Centre for Instructional Technology, NUS]



Top Officials Meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society (CMS) and the Korean Mathematical Society (KMS) was held in Chongqing Beibei

Haiyu Hotspring Hotel at 4pm on May 19, 2010.Korean representatives who attended the meeting

were: Prof. Dohan Kim (Chairman of KMS), Vice Chairman Prof. Jong Hae Keum, Prof. Kil Hyun Kwon, Prof. Sun Yong Jang, General Secretary Prof. Dosang Joe and Prof. Q-Heung Choi. Chinese representatives included: Prof. Zhiming Ma (Chairman of CMS), Vice Chairman Prof. Shicheng Wang, Prof. Anmin Li, Prof. Fuzhou Gong, Prof. Zongmin Wu, Prof. Zhiming Chen, General Secretary Prof. Changping Wang.

Prof. Guiyun Chen (Chairman of Chongqing Mathematical Society and assistant to the President of Southwest University), Prof. Jiazu Zhou (Southwest University, and the Chinese Secretary of the 1st Joint Meeting of CMS and KMS), and Prof. Young Jin Suh (Kyungpook National University, and the Korean Secretary of the 1st Joint Meeting of CMS and KMS), also attended this meeting.

Prof. Shicheng Wang and Prof. Jong Hae Keum, Vice Chairman for CMS and KMS, respectively, co-chaired this Top Officials Meeting.

Prof. Zhiming Ma delivered the first speech. He welcomed the KMS officials and Korean mathematical scientists on behalf of CMS. He highly valued the friend-ship and collaboration between Chinese and Korean mathematical communities. He also introduced CMS organisational structure, institutions, functions, and etc.

Then Prof. Dohan Kim gave his speech. He thanked for the invitation by Prof. Zhiming Ma, and the hospitality by CMS, Chongqing Mathematical Society, and Southwest University. He also expressed his appreciation towards the key support given by Prof. Zhiming Ma and Prof. Le Yang during the application of KMS for holding 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). Prof. Jong Hae Keum expressed that KMS would like to hold the 2nd Joint Meeting of CMS and KMS in 2014. Prof. Dosang Joe introduced KMS organisational structure, institutions, functions, professional journals, and etc.

Korea had been recommended by the IMO Executive Committee as host country of ICM 2014. The Korean representatives introduced the preparation of ICM, and

expressed wish that the Chinese would give some support on the arrangement of seminars.

Chinese and Korean officials discussed about holding joint meetings in the future to encourage academic exchanges between the Chinese and Korean math-ematical graduate students and the youth workers, and to provide support (including financial support) on the seminars and other learning activities among universities and institutions in China and Korea.

Both parties also reviewed the long history of friend-ship and collaboration between mathematical societies of two countries. They reached a consensus to encourage mathematical associations of Chinese provinces to communicate with Korean mathematical societies before reporting to CMS. The two sides made an agreement, that the General Secretaries of CMS and KMS will keep in touch with each other.

At last, the top officers of CMS and KMS expressed sincere thanks to Chongqing Mathematical Society and Southeast University for organising the 1st Joint Meeting of CMS and KMS. They thanked Chongqing govern-ment and Southeast University for the great support, and conference organisers for the effort of organising, and conference workers including the volunteers for the warm service.

After the meeting, Prof. Zhiming Ma invited Prof. Naiqing Song (the Executive Vice President of Southwest University, and committee member of the 1st Joint Meeting of CMS and KMS) and the officials of this Top Officials Meeting for dinner. Prof. Guiyun Chen, Prof. Jiazu Zhou and Prof. Young Jin Suh also attended the dinner.

From Min Chang of the Mathematics and Statistical School of Southeast University

Joint Meeting of the Chinese Mathematical Society and the Korean Mathematical Society



June 18, 2010 marks the centennial of the birth of the famous Chinese mathematician Hua Luogeng (also known as Hua Lo-keng). Recently the Hua Luogeng

Mathematics Key Laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences organised the “Mathematics Forum in Commemoration of the Centennial of the Birth of Hua Luogeng”. The lecturers of the forum highlighted Hua Luogeng’s contributions to the advancement of mathematics of China and of the world while Hua’s students recalled with deep feeling his tireless efforts in teaching.

Members of the audience participating in the forum were mainly young mathematicians and postgraduates with the Chinese Academy of Sciences while those who gave lectures at the forum were notable figures in the international mathematics circle, e.g. Wang Yuan, Wan Zhexian, Lu Qikeng, Yang Le, plus two members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences — Prof. Yum-Tong Siu of Harvard University and Prof. Ivanic of Rutgers University.

In China, Huo Luogeng’s story is known to all, but not many people have a full knowledge of his contri-butions to mathematics. The purpose of holding the forum, as described by Wang Yuefei, Deputy Director of the Institute of Systematic Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, “is to use this opportunity to let young people feel and understand Hua’s academic contributions and academic thinking.”

Hua Luogeng was the founder and pioneer in many fields in mathematical research. He wrote more than 200 papers and monographs, many of which became classics. Since his sudden death while delivering a lecture at the University of Tokyo, Japan, many math-ematics secondary education programs have been named after him. His book on additive prime number theory influenced many subsequent number theorists in China, including the renowned Chen Jingrun who obtained the best result so far on the binary Goldbach conjecture. Hua also made contributions to the

Mathematical Community Commemorates the Centennial of the Birth of Hua Luogeng

development of college education in China. He was the first Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Vice President of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), a new type of Chinese university established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1958, which was aimed at fostering skilled researchers necessary for economic development, defense and education in science and technology.

Hua’s father was a small businessman. Hua met a capable math teacher in middle school who recognised his talent early and encouraged him to read advanced texts. Hua was partially paralysed in his late teenage years, due to mistreatment of a prolonged illness during which he stayed in bed for half a year. His first significant result was concerned with a paper written by Dr. Su Jiaju who claimed to have a closed form radical solution of the quintics. Hua studied Abel’s original paper on the unsolvability of quintics and found a miscalculation in a 13x13 matrix in Su’s paper. So Hua published his rebuttal in an influential mathematics journal in China, and this was noticed by some professors at Tsinghua University, especially Dr. Xiong Qinglai.

Hua did not obtain a formal degree from any university. Although awarded several honorary PhDs, he never got a formal degree from any university.

Reproduced from News of China Association for Science and Technology.

In China, Hua Luogeng’s story is known to all, but not many people have a full knowl-edge of his contributions to mathematics.



The 51st International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO 2010 Kazakhstan) was held during July 2-14, 2010 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

A total of 517 students from 98 countries and regions participated in this competition. China won the 1st position with the score of 197. All six Chinese contestants won the gold medal. Zipei Nie from China was the only participant to obtain a perfect score.

The Chinese team officials consisted of:Captain: Bin Xiong, East China Normal UniversityDeputy Captain: Zhigang Feng, Shanghai High SchoolObserver A: Weigu Li, Peking UniversityObserver B: Xun Li, Fuzhou No.1 High School

The Chinese team members were:Zipei Nie, Shanghai High School, 42 points (full marks),

Gold MedalJialun Li, Zhejiang Yueqing Yuecheng Public Boarding

High School, 36 points, Gold MedalYikang Xiao, Hebei Tangshan No.1 High School, 34

points, Gold MedalMin Zhang (female), No.1 Middle School attached to

Central China Normal University, Hubei province, 30 points, Gold Medal

China won the 51st International Mathematical Olympiad

The top 10 teams were

1 P. R. China 1972. Russia 1693. United States of America 1684. Republic of Korea 1565. Kazakhstan 1486. Thailand 1487. Japan 1418. Turkey 1399. Germany 138

10. Serbia 135

Li Lai, Chongqing Nankai Middle School, 28 points, Gold Medal

Jun Su, Fujian Fuzhou No.1 High School, 27 points, Gold MedalThe cut-off mark for Gold medal was 27 points, with

silver 21 points and bronze 15 points.

Reported by the 51st International Mathematical Olympiad Chinese team



Louis Nirenberg is the first recipient of the newly created Chern Medal of

the International Mathematical Union, which also awarded the prestigious Fields Medals, Nevan-linna Medal and Gauss Medal at its International Congress of Math-ematicians held in Hyderabad, India in August 2010. The official citation of his award is “for his role in the formulation of the modern theory of non-linear elliptic partial differential equations and for mentoring numerous students and post-docs in this area.”

Born on February 25, 1925 in Hamilton, Canada, Nirenberg had his undergraduate education in McGill University and graduate studies in New York University (NYU). He then joined the faculty of NYU and was one of the original members of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where he established his distinguished career up till his retirement in 1999 and where he is now an Emeritus Professor.

Nirenberg has received many prestigious awards and honours, notably the Bôcher Prize of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), Jeffrey-Williams Prize

Louis Nirenberg, First Recipient of the Chern Medal

of the Canadian Mathematical Society, Steele Prize of the AMS, Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the United States National Medal of Science.

He is world renowned not only for his research but also for his lecturing and expository writing. His fundamental work in linear and non-linear partial differential equations and related aspects of complex analysis and differential geometry exerted a great influence in analysis and geometry. He has also applied his expertise to fluid dynamics and the study of physical phenomena. His influence is further extended through his numerous doctoral students, post-docs and research collaborators. His view of math-ematics as a collective intellectual

as well as enjoyable social activity is proverbial. His influential and extensive collaboration may be gleaned from mathematical household terms such as Agmon–Douglis–Nirenberg’s extension, the Gagliardo–Nirenberg, John-Nirenberg and Caffarelli–Kohn–Nirenberg inequali-ties, Gidas–Ni–Nirenberg symmetry theorem, Brézis–Nirenberg solutions.

Nirenberg receives the 2010 Chern Medal from President Pratibha Patil.

Chern and Nirenberg in discussions. (Photo taken in 1989)

Shortly after the award of the Chern Medal, Professor Nirenberg responded to the three questions posed to him by the Chairman of World Scientific, Professor KK Phua.

Question: What is your impression of the late Professor S S Chern’s contribution in mathematics?Nirenberg: Professor Chern made many deep contri-butions in differential geometry over half a century, during which he was the world’s leading geometer. To mention just a few contributions: His generalisation of the Gauss–Bonnet Theorem to higher dimensions, the Chern–Weil characteristic classes (a fundamental result used by many); Chern–Simons characteristic

classes (used also in physics in recent years) and Finsler geometry. His work had enormous influence on others.

Question: Do you have any collaboration or overlapping of research interest with the late Professor S S Chern? Nirenberg: With H Levine, we wrote a paper together on norms for cohomology classes on complex manifolds.

Question: How do you feel to be the 1st Chern Medal recipient?Nirenberg: Of course, I am honoured and delighted, especially since Professor Chern and I had been good friends for many years.



News from Australia

• Dr Bronwyn Harch of CSIRO recently received Queensland’s Outstanding Woman in Technology 2010 award in recognition of her outstanding achievements in embedding informatics into agri-environmental research. Bronwyn’s informatics research impacts over the past 15 years have been in the area of the statistical design of landscape sampling protocols and monitoring programs, as well as the spatio-temporal statistical modeling of complex landscape systems.

• Dr Frank de Hoog is one of four CSIRO scientists to be recognised as a CSIRO Fellow for 2010. The award is made to “exceptional scientists who have displayed eminence in a significant field of science or engineering”. Frank received this designation for his achievements that have resulted in major impacts on key processes in manufacturing and mining, and for seminal contributions to applied and computational mathematics research.

• Professor Kate Smith-Miles, Head of School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University, was awarded the 2010 Australian Mathematical Society Medal. Each year the Medal is presented to a member of the Society under the age of 40 years for distinguished research in the mathematical sciences.

• Professor Peter Hall, University of Melbourne, was awarded the 2010 George Szekeres Medal. The Medal is awarded in even numbered years to a member of the Australian Mathematical Society for an outstanding contribution to the mathematics sciences in the 15 years prior to the year of the award.

• Anita Ponsaing, Melbourne University, was awarded the B.H.Neumann Prize for the best student talk at the 2010 annual meeting of the Australian Math-ematical Society.

• Internet giant Google has recognised Dr Chris Tisdell from University of New South Wales for his OpenCourseWare video project on YouTube by making him a YouTube Partner in Education (Australia). He is the first educator in Australia to receive such honour.

News from China

• Yiming Long Elected to IMU Council Professor Yiming Long, Vice-President of Chinese

Mathematical Society, was elected to be a council member of International Mathematical Union (IMU) during the IMU 2010 General Assembly held on August 17, 2010 in Bangalore, India.

• Dictionary of Mathematics D i c t i o n ar y o f Mat h -

ematics was published by the Science Press, Beijing in August 2010. This is the first ever authori-tat ive and large scale mathematics dictionary compi led by Chinese authors. The Chief Editor of this monumental work is Professor Wang Yuan, member of Chinese Academy of Sciences. There were 17 editorial committees, each basically under the charge of a mathematical department or institute. Editorial members were from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Mathematics and System Sciences, Peking University, Nankai University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Beijing Normal University and other renowned math-ematics institutes and centers. It involved nearly 300 contributors and 200 proof-readers and took nearly 5 years to complete since its inception in 2005.

This dictionary has 17 sections covering foun-dation of mathematics, mathematical logic, number theory, algebra, real and complex analysis, ordinary and partial differential equations, functional analysis, dynamical systems, combinatorics, graph theory, geometry, topology, differential geometry, mathematical statistics, probability theory, compu-tational mathematics, information theory, control theory, operations research, and other topics of mathematics. This comprehensive work of 1,214 pages has altogether about 9,000 entries which come up to three millions words. The dictionary also includes bilingual (Chinese and English) indexes of all the mathematical terminologies. Wang Yuan hopes that this important and useful work will be translated into English in near future.



• CMS Held Hua Luogeng Centennial Memorial Meeting

Chinese Mathematical Society (CMS) held the Hua Luogeng 100 years memorial meeting at the Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences in the afternoon of September 1, 2010. Former chairmen, vice chairmen, secretaries of the CMS, and academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing attended this meeting. CMS Chairman Zhiming Ma presided over the meeting. He said that Mr Hua was the Chairman of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd CMS Council. Under his guidance, CMS had grew to become a relatively strong and active academic association. Many participants in the meeting paid tribute to Hua Luogeng and talked about their encounter with him.

• Inauguration Ceremony of National Center of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences

The inauguration ceremony of the National Center of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences (NCMIS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was held in Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science (AMSS) on December 2, 2010. Liu Yandong, member of Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and State Councilor, and Lu Yongxiang, Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and the President of CAS, were present at the ceremony and made important speeches respectively. Bai Chunli, Vice-President of CAS presided over the ceremony. Guo Lei, President of AMSS, introduced the NCMIS' targets, research models and so on.

In their speeches, Liu Yandong, Lu Yongxiang and Guo Lei pointed out the importance of basic research in mathematics and its applications to applied sciences. They emphasised that basic research guides the development of science and technology, and it is the source of innovation. The main target of NCMIS, as indicated in CAS “Innovation 2020”, is to provide a top level research platform in mathematics and its applications to multidisciplinary sciences such as information technology, economy and finance, biomedical and physical sciences, engineering, etc. Cooperation between research institutes and universities should be strengthened; new ways for collaborative research and joint training should be explored. High level international cooperation and communication focused on the important subjects in science and technology should be encouraged with the aim of achieving world class level research.

News from Hong Kong

• Shaw Prize 2010 In November 2002, a prize

called the “Shaw Prize” was established by the well-known Hong Kong entrepreneur and philanthropist Run Run Shaw to honour individuals who have made “significant breakthroughs in academic and scientific research or application and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.” The Prize is given annually with a monetary award of one million US dollars for each of the three categories: astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.

In September 28, 2010, the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences was awarded to Jean Bourgain of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton “for his profound work in mathematical analysis and its application to partial differential equations, mathematical physics, combinatorics, number theory, ergodic theory and theoretical computer science.”

Born in 1954 in Oostende, Belgium, Bourgain obtained his PhD from the Free University of Brussels in 1977. He has worked in the Free University of Brussels, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA and the Institut de Hautes Édtudes Scientifiques, Paris, and is now at the Institute for Advanced Study, USA. He is a Foreign Member of the Academies of Science of France, Poland and Sweden.

Bourgain has written over 350 papers that span and have great impact and applications in numerous areas such as analysis, functional analysis, ergodic theory, partial differential equations, mathematical physics, combinatorics and theoretical computer science. The following is a sample of his deep and extensive contributions: the embedding, with least distortion, of finite metric spaces in Hilbert space; extending Birkhoff ’s ergodic theorem to very general sparse arithmetic sequences; the boundedness in Lp of the circular maximum function in two dimensions, the “local” version of the Erdös–Volkmann conjecture in arithmetic combinatorics, theory of sum-products in estimation of algebra-geometric character sums, representations of linear groups and applications to number theory, aperiodic tilings of 3-dimensional space, spectral theory of lattice Schrödinger operators modeling



• MSJ Algebra Prize The 2010 Algebra Prize was awarded to the

following members of MSJ.

Nobuo Tsuzuki (Professor at Tohoku University) Fundamental and outstanding contribution to

the theory of p-adic cohomology and p-adic differential equations, a most important subject of present arithmetic geometry over a field of positive characteristic.

Hiroaki Terao (Professor at Hokkaido University) Fundamental and outstanding contribution to

the algebraic and geometric theory of hyperplane arrangements, connecting various branches of modern mathematics, including algebraic geom-etry, topology, Lie groups, etc.

• MSJ Analysis Prize The 2010 Analysis Prize was awarded to the

following members of MSJ.

Shu Nakamura (The University of Tokyo) Microlocal analysis for Schrödinger equations and

spectral theory.

Hideo Nagai (Osaka University) Study on large deviation probability minimisation

for long time via risk-sensitive control.

Toshitaka Nagai (Hiroshima University) Mathematical analysis for models of chemotaxis.

• MSJ Geometry Prize The 2010 Geometry Prize was awarded to the

following member of MSJ.

Kazuo Akutagawa (Tohoku University) Studies on the Yamabe invariant

Nobuhiro Honda (Tohoku University) Studies on twistor spaces of self-dual manifolds

• MSJ Iyanaga Spring Prize The 2010 MSJ Spring Prize was awarded to Osamu

Iyama, a professor at the Graduate School of Mathematics, Nagoya University. Osamu Iyama is recognised for his outstanding contributions to “Studies on representations of finite-dimensional

News from Japan

• Michio Jimbo Awarded 2010 Wigner Medal Michio Jimbo has been

awarded 2010 Wigner Medal. The medal presentation cere-mony will be held during the international meeting “XXVIII International Collo-quium on Group-Theoretical Methods in Physics” which will take place in Northum-bria University in UK from July 26. The medal is

News from India

TWAS 2010 Prize

• Vivek Borkar, School of Technology and Computer Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, and Edgar Zanotto, Vitreous Materials Laboratory, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, share the 2010 TWAS Prize in the Engineering Sciences. Borkar is honoured for his seminal contributions to the theory and the algo-rithms for time-averaged (“ergodic”) control, inclu-sive of situations involving additional constraints, noisy observations or model uncertainty. Zanotto is recognised for his fundamental contributions to the understanding of glass crystallisation and the development of novel glass-ceramics.

• Manindra Agrawal, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Tech-nology Kanpur, India, and Carlos Gustavo Tamm de Araujo Moreira, Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, share the 2010 TWAS Prize in Mathematics. Agrawal is honoured for his discovery of a novel characterisation of prime numbers leading to a deterministic and efficient way of testing primality of a number. Moreira is recognised for his fundamental contribution to the study of the interplay between fractal geometry and dynamical bifurcations.

transport in inhomogeneous media, and explicit construction of pseudorandom objects (extractors).

The past Shaw Prize recipients (2004–2009) in the mathematical sciences have been Shiing-Shen Chern, Andrew Wiles, David Mumford, Wentsun Wu, Robert Langlands, Richard Taylor, Vladimir Arnold, Ludwig Faddeev, Simon Donaldson and Clifford Taubes.

awarded to recognise the outstanding contribution to understanding of Physics through group theory. Prof. M. Jimbo at Rikkyo University was awarded the medal for his introduction of quantum groups and his study of affine Lie algebras, in connection with classical and quantum integrable systems.



algebras and Cohen–Macaulay modules”. The Spring Prize and the Autumn Prize of the Society are the most prestigious prizes awarded by the MSJ to its members. The Spring Prize is awarded to those of age below 40 who have obtained outstanding mathematical results.

The Prize Presentation Ceremony was held on March 25 on Hiyoshi Campus, Keio University during the 2010 Spring Meeting of the Math-ematical Society of Japan.

• MSJ Iyanaga Autumn Prize The 2010 Mathematical Society

of Japan Autumn Prize was awarded to Masaki Izumi, a professor at Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. Masaki Izumi is recognised for his outstanding contributions to “Operator Algebras and Noncommutative Analysis”. The Spring Prize and the Autumn Prize of the Society are the most prestigious prizes awarded by the MSJ to its members. The Autumn Prize is awarded without age restriction to people who have made exceptional contributions in their fields of research. The Prize Presentation Ceremony was held on September 23 at Higashiyama Campus, Nagoya University during the Autumn meeting of MSJ.

• Masanao Ozawa Awarded Prize for Science and Technology

Masanao Ozawa was awarded 2010 Prize for Science and Technology in Research Cate-gory by the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Masanao Ozawa, a professor at Nagoya University is recognised for his outstanding contributions to “pioneering research on quantum measurement theory”. The purpose of the prize in Research Category is to recognise researchers who have done highly original researches or developments which can contribute to the development of Science and Technology in Japan.

Masanao Ozawa also received the International

Quantum Communication Award 2010, which was presented to him at the International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computation held in Brisbane, Australia during July 19–23, 2010.

• Takuro Mochizuki Awarded Japan Academy Medal

Takuro Mochizuki was awarded the 6th Japan Academy Medal by the Japan Academy. Takuro Mo ch i z u k i , an a s s o c i ate professor at the Research Insti-tute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University is recognised for his outstanding contributions to “Study on the Asymptotic Behav-iour of Harmonic Bundles”. The Purpose of the Medal is to give formal recognition to outstanding young researchers, while encouraging them in their future work. In the FY 2009, 6 awardees are selected among the recipients of the JSPS Prize.

• JSPS Prize for Narutaka Ozawa Narutaka Ozawa was awarded

the 6th JSPS Prize by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Narutaka Ozawa, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Math-ematical Sciences, University of Tokyo is recognised for his outstanding contribu-tions to “Theory of Discrete Groups and Operator Algebras”. The objective of JSPS Prize is to recognise and support excellent young researchers under 45 years of age.

• Yoshiko Ogata Received Inoue Science Research Award

Yoshiko Ogata was awarded the 2nd Inoue Science Research Award by Inoue Foundation for Science. Yoshiko Ogata, an associate professor at the Grad-uate School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Tokyo is recognised for her outstanding contribu-tions to “Large deviations in nonequilibrium and equilibrium states of quantum systems”. The objec-tive of the award is to support promising young researchers, who have already achieved remarkable results in basic research in natural sciences, to develop pioneering research achievement in a very original and independent way.

Yoshiko Ogata was an awardee of the MSJ



Univ.). Other notable invited speakers included C ars ten C ars tens en (Humboldt University), Youri Egorov (Paul Saba-tier University), Baohua Fu (Chinese Academy of Science), Young-Hoon Kiem (Seoul National Univers ity) , Miyuki Koiso (Kyushu Univer-sity), and Kang-Hyurk Lee (KIAS). In addition, there was an invited lecture given by Hyun Dae Lee (Inha Univ.), the winner of 2009 Sangsan Prize for Young Mathematician.

A total of 169 presentations were delivered in 9 special sessions, poster session, plenary and invited sessions.

• 2009 SCI Impact Factors of the Journal of KMS and the Bulletin of KMS

• AMC 2013 The Asian Mathematical Conference (AMC) series is

held every 4-5 years and hosted by countries in Asia. The first AMC was held in Hong Kong (1990), the second in Thailand (1995), the third in the Philip-pines (2000), the fourth in Singapore (2005), and the latest was Malaysia (2009). The 6th AMC will take place in Busan, Korea in June, 2013. This will be the first time the AMC will be held in a country outside Southeast Asia and it is expected to draw over 300 mathematicians from the region. One of the most important factors to consider during the preparation process for AMC 2013 is the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), the largest mathematics conference in the world. Since Seoul, the capital of Korea has been recommended to host the ICM in 2014, the hosting of AMC 2013 is expected to help Korea to assess the effectiveness and adequacy of its preparation for ICM 2014. It will also have a posi-tive impact on Asian mathematics community in expanding its activities to the scale of the European

* Eigenfactor™ Score (EF): A measure of the overall value provided by all of the articles published in a given journal in a year.

2007 Takebe Katahiro Prize for Encouragement of Young Researchers.

• Toshiyuki Kobayashi Awarded Inoue Prize for Science

Toshiyuki Kobayashi was awarded 27th Inoue Prize for Science by Inoue Founda-tion for Science. Toshiyuki Kobayashi, a professor at the University of Tokyo is recog-nised for his outstanding contributions to “analysis of infinite-dimensional symmetry”.

• Makiko Sasada Received First JSPS Ikushi Prize

Makiko Sasada was awarded the first JSPS Ikushi Prize by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Makiko Sasada, a PhD student in the Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, is honoured for her work on “hydrodynamic limit for non-gradient systems”. JSPS Ikushi Prize has been established upon an imperial donation to encourage young researchers, especially PhD students.

News from Korea

• New President for Korean Mathematical Society (KMS)

Professor Dong Youp Suh (KAIST) was elected as the twenty-first President of KMS. His term of office is January 1, 2011-December 31, 2012.

• KMS hosted 2010 Global KMS Interna-tional Conference

2010 Global KMS International Conference, the fall meeting of the KMS, was successfully held from October 22 to 23, 2010 at POSTECH in Pohang, Korea. The aim of the 2010 Global KMS International Conference was to bring together researchers working in various areas of Mathematics to foster exchange of new ideas, and to promote international collaborations.

Plenary speaker of the conference was Paul H. Rabinowitz (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), and there was a special lecture by the 2010 Korean Science Award winner, Hyeonbae Kang (Inha



Congress of Mathematics (ECM). The venue for ACM 2013 will be BEXCO, the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, Busan.

• KMS–MSJ Joint Meeting The Korean Mathematical Society (KMS) and

Mathematical Society of Japan (MSJ) plan to organise a KMS–MSJ joint-meeting covering vast area of mathematics in September, 2012 at Kyushu University in Japan. Prof. Takashi Tsuboi, the President of MSJ, proposed this event under the academic exchanges agreement between KMS and MSJ. The Board of Trustees of MSJ and the professors at Kyushu University responsible for the 2012 fall annual meeting of MSJ had approved this project.

News from Malaysia

• Recent Events Malaysian Mathematical Society just held its 18th

National Symposium on Mathematical Sciences during December 8–10, 2010.

National Mathematical Olympiad competition, June 26, 2010.

• Activities in 2011 Frank Morgan, Atwell Professor of Mathematics,

Williams College Vice-President, American Math-ematical Society will be visiting Malaysia for a week to speak on popularisation of mathematics during first quarter of 2011.

National Mathematical Olympiad competition will be held in May/June 2011.

19th National Symposium on Mathematical Sciences will be held in July or December 2011.

There will be several Mathematics Camps for Junior and High Schools in 2011.

News from New Zealand

• New Jones Medal A new medal for excellence

in mathematics was awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand at their annual research honours celebration in Christchurch on November 10, 2010. The medal is named after Professor Sir Vaughan Jones, a world-renowned New

Zealand mathematician now living in the USA. The first Jones Medal was presented to

Professor Emeritus John Butcher FRSNZ of The University of Auckland and recognises his lifetime achievement in mathematics. Dr Garth Carnaby, president of the Royal Society of New Zealand, said Professor Butcher’s exceptional work on numerical methods for solving differential equations is regarded as some of the best work ever done in this area. “This work has remained at the forefront of international research for more than 45 years. John Butcher has also been a tremendous leader for developing mathematical sciences in New Zealand.”

Professor Sir Vaughan Jones, after whom the medal is named, also presented Professor Butcher with $5000 in prize money and praised him for his work, saying he owed a ‘personal mathematical debt’ to Butcher. “I believe we are living in a Golden Age for New Zealand mathematics. There is ample evidence for this. Our disproportionate representation at the International Congress of Mathematics, and a remarkable performance at the Mathematics Olympiad are but two instances. I believe this Golden Age was ushered in by John Butcher.”

• 2010 NZMS Research Award Congratulations to Charles Semple of the University

of Canterbury who has received the 2010 NZMS Research Award for landmark contributions to combinatorics, and in particular matroid theory, as well as leading work in phylogenetics and computational biology. This annual award was instituted in 1990 to foster mathematical research in New Zealand and to recognise excellence in research carried out by New Zealand mathematicians.

• 2010 NZMS Early Career Award Congratulations to Mihály Kovács of the University

of Otago who has received the 2010 NZMS Early Career Award for his innovative research in the field of stochastic partial differential equations, particularly their numerical approximation. This award was instituted in 2006 to reward early career New Zealand mathematicians.

News from Singapore

• The Distinguished Visitor Programme In this annual programme, a distinguished math-

ematician/mathematics educator interacts with



related topics including the analysis of antisym-metric perturbations of Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds. 2. Uses a probabilistic approach (a stochastic control method) to estimate of the transi-tion density of diffusions. This original work caught Daniel Stroock by surprise.

• TMS Young Mathematician Award Assistant Professor Jeng-Daw Yu, Department of

Mathematics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Research interest: algebraic geometry and of number theory. Roughly speaking, much of the work can be described as the investigation of extracting useful information of varied geometric objects from their associated differential equations. In some sense, the occurred differential equation (or the collection of its solutions) measures and controls the way how the pieces of the varied geometric objects are glued together to form a parametrised family.

News from Vietnam

• One full professor and eight associate professors titles in Mathematics were awarded in November 2010 in Vietnam. In Vietnam the professor and associate professor titles are awarded once per year by a National Council for all subjects. No restriction on the numbers of awarded titles, but many criteria should be fulfilled. There are committees at different levels to examine if a concrete candidate fulfils these criteria. In this year the following mathematicians got new promotion:

Professor: Nguyen Quoc Thang (Number Theory, Institute of Mathematics Hanoi)

Associate professors: To Anh Dung (Prob-ability, College of Natural Sciences in Vietnam National University in Hochiminh city), Nguyen Viet Hai (Algebra, Hai Phong University), Dang Khanh Hoi (Differential and Integral Equations, University of Hoa Binh), Nguyen Thieu Huy (Differential and Integral Equations, Polytechnic University of Hanoi), Ho Dang Phuc (Statistics, Institute of Mathematics Hanoi), Mai Duc Thanh (Analysis, International College in Vietnam National University in Hochiminh city), Nguyen Van Trao (Analysis, Hanoi National University of Education) and Tran Van Tan (Differential Geom-etry, Hanoi National University of Education).

both mathematicians/mathematics educators at the Singapore universities as well as teachers and pupils at the schools. The aim of the programme is to expose as large and diverse an audience as possible to the excitement and relevance of mathematics, thereby enhancing the awareness of mathematics in the society. For the year 2011, the distinguished visitor is Professor Frank Morgan of Williams College, USA. His visit programme from May 1-7 will consist of a public lecture, as well as lectures/workshops at the National University of Singapore, the National Institute of Education and Teachers’ Academy.

• The Singapore Mathematical Olympiad The Singapore Mathematical Olympiad is the largest

and oldest mathematics competition in Singapore. Its predecessor was the Inter-School Mathematical Competition in the mid-1950. This annual competi-tion is held in June and it consists of junior, senior and open sections. In recent years about ten thou-sands students from all over Singapore took part in SMO.

News from Taiwan • TMS Society Award Professor Jing Yu, Department of Mathematics,

National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Research Interests: Number Theory, Algebra, and Arithmetic Geometry. In particular Arithmetic of Function Fields in positive Characteristic. As a descendent of the Artin school, Jing Yu is interested in all phases of Number Theory and Arithmetical Algebraic Geometry. In recent years he has done major works in the arithmetic of function fields, especially transcendence theory. He is also interested in doing symbolic computations with computer.

• TMS Academic Award Professor Shuenn-Jyi Sheu, Institute of Mathematics,

Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. Research interest: stochastic control theory,

k large deviation, and stochastic partial differ-ential equations. Fundamental contributions to the stochastic control approach to mathematical finance, using stochastic analysis to study POE, large deviations and MCMC. Just to highlight two achievements of his: 1. Shuenn-Jyi and collaborators open up a new research direction, the asymptotic analysis of non reversible Markov processes. Its



55January 2011, Volume 1 No 1

Conference CALENDAR

JANUARY 2011

3 – 5 Jan 2011ICMS 2011 — International Conference on Mathematical Sciences in Honour of Professor A. M. MathaiKerala, Indiahttp://www.cmsintl.org/

4 – 7 Jan 2011Chiang Mai University International Conference 2011 CMIC-2011Chiang Mai, Thailandhttp://math.science.cmu.ac.th/CMIC2011/index.htm

4 – 8 Jan 2011COMSNETS 2011 — The 3rd International Conference on Communication Systems and NetworksBangalore, Indiahttp://www.comsnets.org/

5 – 7 Jan 2011MMM 2011 — The 17th International Conference on MultiMedia ModelingTaipei, Taiwan http://mmm2011.org/

5 – 9 Jan 2011JSPS-VAST Japan-Vietnam Bilateral Joint ProjectsSendai, Japanhttp://www.math.tohoku.ac.jp/~ishikawa/jvsendai/

7 Jan 2011Conference in Dynamical Systems: A Celebration in Honor of Kenneth James Palmer of His RetirementTaipei, Taiwanhttp://math.cts.ntu.edu.tw/

7 – 8 Jan 2011International Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science ICMCS 2011Tamil Nadu, IndiaDubai, United Arab Emirateshttp://www.loyolacollege.edu/ICMCS2011/icmcs2011.htm

7 – 9 Jan 2011ICCMS 2011 — 2011 3rd International Conference on Computer Modeling and SimulationMumbai, Indiahttp://www.iccms.org/cfp.htm

7 – 10 Jan 2011Third Hope ConferenceTokyo, Japanhttp://www.hopemeetings.jp/eng/2011/index.html

8 – 9 Jan 20112nd IIMA International Conference on Advanced Data Analysis, Business Analytics and IntelligenceAhmedabad, Gujarat, Indiahttp://www.iimahd.ernet.in/icadabai2011/

10 – 13 Jan 2011The 7th East Asian School of Knots and Related TopicsHigashi-Hiroshima, Japan http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/top/conf/2011EastAsia7/index.html

10 – 14 Jan 2011Nonlinear Phenomena: A view from Mathematics and PhysicsTaipei, Taiwanhttp://www.tims.ntu.edu.tw/ch/index/php

10 Jan – 4 Feb 2011Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) Summer SchoolAdelaide, Australiahttp://www.math.adelaide.edu.au/amsi2011

11 – 14 Jan 2011Miniworkshop of AlgebraTaipei, Taiwanhttp://www.tims.ntu.edu.tw/ch/index/php

12 – 16 Jan 2011Bhubaneshwar Symposium on Noncommutative Geometry, Mathematical Physics and Number TheoryBhubaneshwa, Indiahttp://sites.google.com/site/ncgconference/

14 – 21 Jan 2011Postech Winter School: Serre’s Modularity ConjecturePohang, Koreahttp://math.postech.ac.kr/~pntag/

17 – 20 Jan 2011ACE 2011 — The 13th Australasian Computing Education ConferencePerth, QLD, Australiahttp://www.sci.usq.edu.au/conferences/ace2011/

17 – 22 Jan 2011CATS 2011, Computing — The Australasian Theory SymposiumPerth, Australiahttp://cats.it.usyd.edu.au/

17 – 28 Jan 2011CIMPA-UNESCO-MICINN-Vietnam Research School on Braids in Algebra, Geometry and TopologyHanoi, Vietnamhttp:www.cimpa-icpam.org/spip.php?article295

18 – 22 Jan 2011Arithmatic and Algebraic geometry 2011Tokyo, Japanhttp://kak.k.hosei.ac.jp/conference

20 – 21 Jan 2011Combinatorial Representation Theory and Integrable ModelsMelbourne, Australiahttp://sites.google.com/site/corethinmo2010/

21 – 23 Jan 2011ACCT11 — International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communication TechnologiesRohtak, Indiahttp://rgconferences.com/acct11/

21 – 22 Jan 2011National Conference on Recent Frontiers in Applied Dynamical SystemsCoimbatore, Indiahttp://www.karunya.edu/sh/maths/ncrfads2011/

24 – 28 Jan 2011GCOE Conference “Derived Categories 2011 Tokyo”Tokyo, Japanhttp://faculty.ms.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kawamata_lab/derived/

25 – 27 Jan 2011International Conference on Mathematical and Statistical ScienceDubai, United Arab Emirateshttp://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/dubai/icmss/

26 – 28 Jan 2011IEEE ICIET 2011 — 2011 IEEE International Conference on Information and Education TechnologyGuiyang, Chinahttp://www.iciet.org/index.htm

26 – 28 Jan 2011ORO 2011 — International Conference on Operations Research and Optimization 2011Tehran, Iranhttp://www.scadasummit.com/Event.aspx?id=376200

30 Jan – 3 Feb 2011 The 2011 Annual Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics ConferenceAdelaide, Australiahttp://anziam2011.adelaide.edu.au/

Conferences in Asia Pacific Region

Conference CALENDAR


FEBRUARY 2011

1 – 2 Feb 2011 CCCA 2011 — International Conference on Computers, Communications, Control and Automation Hokkaido, Japanhttp://www.sit-association.org/ccca2011/

6 – 11 Feb 2011 The Annual Mathematics and Statistics-in-Industry Study Group (MISG) Workshop Melbourne, Australia http://www.rmit.edu.au/maths/misg

7 – 11 Feb 2011 International Conference in Harmonic Analysis Melbourne, Australia http://www.amsi.org.au/index.php/events/415-international-conference-in-harmonic-analysis

9 – 12 Feb 2011ICDCIT – 2011 The Seventh International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet TechnologyOdisha, Indiahttp://www.icdcit.ac.in

9 – 12 Feb 2011 WSDM 2011 — 4th International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining Melbourne, Australia http://www.wsdm2011.org/wsdm2011/home

10 – 12 Feb 2011 ICCSP 2011 — International Conference on Communications and Signal Processing Kerala, India http://iccsp2011.nitc.ac.in/

12 – 14 Feb 2011International Conference on Communication, Computing & Security (ICCCS2011)Odisha, Indiahttp://nitrkl.ac.in/conference/icccs2011

14 – 18 Feb 2011First Biennial International Group Theory Conference 2011Johor Bahru, Malaysiahttp://www.ibnusina.utm.my/bigtc2011/

15 – 16 Feb 2011 ICEBDIS'11 — International Conference on E-Business & Digital Information System Kathmandu, Nepal http://www.icebdis.com/

18 – 20 Feb 2011 WALCOM 2011, Workshop on Algorithms and Computation New Delhi, India http://www.cse.iitd.ac.imitk/

18 – 20 Feb 2011 EAIT 2011 — 2nd International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology, 2011 Kolkata, Indiahttps://sites.google.com/site/csieait2011/

19 – 20 Feb 2011 ICDC 2011 — The 2011 International Conference on Digital ConvergenceHyderabad, Indiahttp://www.iacsit.org/icdc/cfp.htm

21 – 25 Feb 2011 NCTS(Taiwan)-CPT(France) Joint Workshop on Symplectic Geometry and Quantum Symmetries in Mathematical PhysicsHsin-Chu, Taiwanhttp://math.cts.nthu.edu.tw/Mathematics/2011Taiwan-FranceWorkshop.htm

22 – 23 Feb 2011Mathematics Beyond Formulas and TheoremsDelhi, Indiahttp://sites.google.com/site/nationalconferencemathematics

23 – 24 Feb 2011 CNC 2011 — 2nd International Conference on Advances in Communication, Network, and Computing Bangalore, Karnataka, India http://cnc.engineersnetwork.org/2011/

23 – 25 Feb 20114th International Conference on Science and Mathematics Education in Developing CountriesPhnom Penh, Cambodiahttp://www.cambmathsociety.org/conf/HOME.html

23 – 25 Feb 2011 International Conference on Computer Mathematics and Natural Computing Penang, Malaysia http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/penang/iccmnc/

23 – 25 Feb 2011 ISWPC 2011 — IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Pervasive Computing 2011 Hong Kong, China http://www.iswpc.org/2011/

24 – 26 Feb 2011International Conference on Multi Body DynamicsAndhra Pradesh, Indiahttp://www.kluniversity.in/icmbd2011/index.htm

25 – 26 Feb 2011 International Conference on LogicInformation, Control & Computation 2011 Gandhigram, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, Indiahttp://iclicc2011.co.in/

25 – 27 Feb 20112011 International Conference on Logic, Information, Control & ComputationTamil Nadu, Indiahttp://iclicc2011.co.in/

26 – 28 Feb 20112011 3rd International Conference on Machine Learning and Computing: ICMLC 2011 Singaporewww.icmlc.org/cfp.htm

MARCH 2011

1 – 2 Mar 2011MathWest WorkshopPerth, Australiahttp://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/community/year-of-maths/mathwest-workshop-2011/_nocache

8 – 11 Mar 2011 Challenges in Statistics and Operations Research Kuwait City, Kuwait http://conf.stat.kuniv.edu/

9 – 10 Mar 2011Third Conference and Workshop on Group TheoryTehran, Iranhttp://www.grouptheory.ir/tehran2011/

9 – 11 Mar 2011 ICISIL 2011 — International Conference on Information Systems for Indian Languages Patiala, India http://www.icisil2011.org/

10 – 11 Mar 2011 ITC 2011 — Second International Conference on Recent Trends in Information, Telecommunication and Computing Kochi, Kerala, India http://itc.engineersnetwork.org/2011/

13 – 17 Mar 2011 SAC'11 — The 2011 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing TaiChung, Taiwan http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2011

13 – 16 Mar 2011 CYBER 2011 — IEEE International Conference on Cyber Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems Kunming, China http://www.ieee-cyber.org/2011/

14 – 17 Mar 2011Low Dimensional Topology and Number Theory IIIFukuoka, JAPANhttp://www2.math.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~morisita/workshop.html

14 Mar – 10 Jun 2011 Probability and Discrete Mathematics in Mathematical Biology Singapore http://www2.ims.nus.edu.sg/Programs/011mathbio/index.php

16 – 18 Mar 2011 DATICS-IMECS'11 — DATICS-IMECS'11 Workshop Hong Kong, China http://datics.nesea-conference.org/datics-imecs2011/

Conference CALENDAR Conference CALENDAR


16 – 18 Mar 2011 IMECS 2011 — International Multi Conference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2011Hong Kong, China http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2011/

17 – 21 Mar 2011International Conference on K-Theory and Its Applications (in Honor of the 70th Birthday of Professor Aderemi Oluyomi Kuku)Nanjing, Chinahttp://www.numbertheory.org/ntw/announcements.html#nanjing_conference

20 – 23 Mar 2011 ISCI 2011 — IEEE Symposium on Computers & Informatics Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia http://www.mypels.org/isci2011

20 – 23 Mar 2011The Mathematical Society of Japan Spring Meeting 2011.Tokyo, Japanhttp://mathsoc.jp/en/meeting/waseda11mar/

21 – 25 Mar 2011 SAC'11 — The 2011 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing TaiChung, Taiwan http://oldwww.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2011/

21 – 25 Mar 2011ACM-SAC 2011 Conference Track on Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology (BIO)TaiChung, Taiwanhttp://www.nrcbioinformatics.ca/acmsac2011/

22 – 24 Mar 2011 ASIACCS 2011 — The 6th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security Hong Kong, China http://www.cs.hku.hk/asiaccs2011/

24 – 26 Mar 2011International Conference on Quantum Optics and Quantum Computing (ICQOQC-11)Utar Pradesh, Indiahttp://www.jiit.ac.in/jiit/ICQOQC%20’11/index.htm

25 – 27 Mar 2011The Seventh International Conference on Number Theory and Smarandache NotionsWeinan, ChinaContact [email protected]://www.ams.org/meetings/calender/2011_mar25-27_shaanxi.html

26 – 27 Mar 2011 ISAC 2011 — International Symposia in Advance Computing Lucknow, India http://www.myprayas.co.in/

28 – 31 Mar 2011 Mathematical Modelling and Applications to Industrial Problems Kerala, India http://mmip.nitc.ac.in/

29 – 30 Mar 2011 International Workshop on Mathematical and Physical Foundations of Discrete Time Quantum Walk Tokyo, Japan http://www.th.phys.titech.ac.jp/~shikano/dtqw/

29 – 31 Mar 2011 International Conference on Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Manila, Philippines http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/manila/iccsam/

29 – 31 Mar 2011 International Conference on Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing Manila, Philippines http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/manila/icmssc/

29 – 31 Mar 2011 International Conference on Computational and Mathematical Engineering Manila, Philippines http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/manila/iccme/

APRIL 2011

11 - 15 Apr 2011Workshop in Complex and Algebraic GeometryBeijing, Chinahttp://www.math.ac.cn/WICAG2011/home.htm

12 – 14 Apr 2011 AIML 11 — ICGST International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Dubai, United Arab Emirates http://www.icgst.com/con11/aiml11/index.html

12 – 14 Apr 2011International Conference on Mathematical and Computational Biology 2011 (ICMCB 2011)Malacca, Malaysiahttp://einspem.upm.edu.my/icmcb2011

14 – 16 Apr 2011 ICMFII 2011 — The 1st International Conference on Multidimensional Finance, Insurance and Investment Hammamet, Tunisia http://icmfii.com/

15 – 17 Apr 2011 ICDIP 2011 — 2011 3rd International Conference on Digital Image Processing Chengdu, China http://www.icdip.org/cfp.htm

19 – 21 Apr 2011 ICMSAO 2011 — 4th International Conference on Modeling, Simulation and Applied Optimization Kuala Lumpur, Malaysiahttp://webkl.utm.my/icmsao2011/

25 – 27 April 2011 The 4th International Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ICMS2011) Phuket Island, Thailand www.wjms.org.uk/icms2011

25 – 29 Apr 2011Stochastic Partial Differential Equations and Related TopicsTianjin, Chinahttp://www.nim.nankai.edu.cn/activities/conferences/hy20110425/index.htm

27 – 28 Apr 2011The Third Conference on Mathematical SciencesZarqa, Jordanhttp://www.zpu.edu.jo/CMS/cms.htm

29 – 30 Apr 2011 ICAPM 2011 — 2011 International Conference on Applied Physics and Mathematics Chennai, India http://www.icapm.org/cfp.htm

MAY 2011

2 – 4 May 2011 ICNCI 2011 — 2011 International Conference on Network and Computational IntelligenceChongqing, China http://www.icnci.org/cfp.htm

2 – 6 May 2011 SAMPTA 2011 — The 9th International Conference on Sampling Theory and ApplicationsSingapore http://sampta2011.ntu.edu.sg/

9 – 11 May 2011 IEEE ICIME — 2011 3rd IEEE International Conference on Information Management and EngineeringZhengzhou, China http://www.icime.org/

14 – 15 May 2011 CMSP 2011 — International Conference on Multimedia and Signal ProcessingGuilin, China http://ncis-cmsp2011.gxnu.edu.cn/

15 – 28 May 2011CIMPA-UNESCO-MICINN-Thailand Research School on Spectral triples and their ApplicationsBangkok, Thailandhttp:www.cimpa-icpam.org/spip.php?article305

18 – 19 May 2011 Second International Conference on Recent Trends in Information Processing & Computing IPC 2010 Tamil Nadu, India http://ipc.engineersnetwork.org/2011/

Conference CALENDAR


22 – 27 May 201136th IEEE International conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing ICASSP2011Wuhan, Chinahttp://www.icassp2011.com

23 – 25 May 2011 TAMC 2011, 8th Annual Conference on Theory and Applications of Models of ComputationTokyo, Japan http://www.tamc2011.com/

23 – 25 May 2011 CCDC 2011 — Chinese Control and Decision Conference Mianyang, China http://www.ccdc.neu.edu.cn/

24 – 27 May 2011 The 15th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data MiningShenzhen, China http://pakdd2011.pakdd.org/

25 – 27 May 2011 International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Science Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/icmcs/

25 – 27 May 2011 International Conference on Computational Statistics and Data Analysis Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/iccsda/

25 –27 May 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/icamsc/

25 – 27 May 2011 International Conference on Mathematical Biology and Ecology Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/icmbe/

25 – 27 May 2011 International Conference on Computational Mathematics Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/iccm/

25 – 27 May 2011 International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Neural Computing Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/tokyo/icfsnc/

29 May – 1 Jun 2011 ISNN 2011 — 8th International Symposium on Neural Networks Guilin, China http://isnn2011.mae.cuhk.edu.hk/

30 May – 3 Jun 2011 International Conference on Asymptotics and Special Functions Hong Kong, China http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/rcms/ICASF2011/index.html

JUNE 2011

1 – 2 Jun 2011 ICOMLAI 2011 — International Conference on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Penang, Malaysia http://www.icss-edu.tw/icomlai2011/index.htm

1 – 3 Jun 2011 ICCS 2011 — 11th International Conference on Computational Science Tsukuba, Japan http://www.iccs-meeting.org/

4 – 5 Jun 2011The 9th Takagi LecturesKyoto, Japan,.http://www.ms.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~toshi/takagi/

6 – 10 Jun 2011 International Workshop on Representation Theory and Harmonic Analysis Tianjin, Chinahttp://www.ssr.nankai.edu.cn/ 13 – 15 Jun 2011 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Research Tianjin, China http://www.isam.nakai.edu.cn/

17 – 19 Jun 2011 CSIE 2011 — 2nd World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering Changchun, China http://world-research-institutes.org/conferences/CSIE/2011/

20 – 24 Jun 2011 The 7th International Conference on “Mathematical Methods in Reliability” — Theory, Methods, Applications Beijing, China http://www.mmr2011.cn/

21 – 25 Jun 20112011 IFSA World Congress, AFSS International ConferenceSurabaya and Bali, Indonesiahttp://ifsa2011.eepis-its.edu/

21 – 25 Jun 2011The 6th International Conference in Abstract harmonic AnalysisTianjin, Chinahttp://www.nim.nankai.edu.cn/activities/conferences/hy20110621/index.htm

27 – 29 Jun 2011The 7th East Asia SIAM Conference: EASIAM 2011Tokyo, Japanhttp://oishi.info.waseda.ac.jp/~easiam2011/

27 Jun – 1 Jul 20112nd Istanbul Design Theory, Graph Theory and Combinatorics ConferenceIstanbul, Turkeyhttp://home.ku.edu.tr/~eyazici/Research/Design2011/conference-organizers.htm

27 Jun – 15 Jul 2011Sino-French Summer Institute 2011 in Arithmetic GeometryTianjin, China http://www.nim.nankai.edu.cn/activities/conferences/hy2011067/index.htm

28 – 29 Jun 2011 DMO 2011 — 3rd Conference on Data Mining and Optimization Bangi, Malaysia http://dmo.ukm.my/DMO11/

28 – 30 Jun 20112011 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy SystemsTaipei, Taiwanhttp://fuzzieee2011.nutn.edu.tw/

29 Jun – 1 Jul 2011 ICSDM 2011 — IEEE International Conference on Spatial Data Mining and Geographical Knowledge Services Fuzhou, China http://www.icsdm2011.org/

30 Jun – 2 Jul 2011 CISIS 2011 — CISIS-2011-Track: Artificial Intelligence and Agent Technology Seoul, South Korea http://dslab.ci.seikei.ac.jp/conf/cisis/2011

JULY 2011

3 – 6 Jul 2011The Second IMS Asia Pacific Rim Meetings Tokyo, Japan http://www.sonic-city.or.jp/modules/english/

3 – 7 Jul 2011AAMT-MERGA Conference 2011: Mathematics: Traditions and New PracticesAlice Spring, Australiahttp://www.aamt.edu.au/conferences/AAMT-MERGA-conference

3 – 7 Jul 2011 Mathematics Education Research Group of Australia (MERGA) Alice Springs, Fremantle, Australia http://www.merga.net.au/conferences

4 – 6 Jul 2011 The 2nd Institute of Mathematical Statistics Asia Pacific Rim Meeting Tokyo, Japan http://www.ims-aprm2011.org/

4 – 10 Jul 2011 International Conference on Topology and Its Applications (ICTA), 2011 Islamabed, Pakistan http://ww2.ciit-isb.edu.pk/math/

Conference CALENDAR Conference CALENDAR


8 – 11 Jul 2011 IMS — China International Conference on Statistics and Probability 2011 Xian, China http://www.stat.umn.edu/~statconf/imschina2011/

10 – 13 Jul 20112011 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition (ICWAPR2011)Guilin, Chinahttp://www.icmlc.com

10 – 15 Jul 201135th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education PME35Ankara, Turkeyhttp://www.arber.com.tr/pme35.org/index.php/home

10 – 15 Jul 2011 Conference for the International Federation of Operational Research Societies Melbourne, Australia http://www.ifors2011.org/

10 – 16 Jul 2011 International Conference on Analysis and Its Applications Aligarh, India http://www.amu.ac.in/conference/icaa2011/

10 – 16 Jul 2011 International Conference on Rings and Algebras in Honor of Professor Pjek-Hwee Lee Taipei, Taiwan http://moonstone.math.ncku.edu.tw/2011AlgConference/index.html

11 – 13 Jul 2011 NDT 2011 — 3rd International Conference on Networked Digital Technologies Macau, China http://www.dirf.org/ndt

12 – 15 Jul 2011 The 6th SEAMS-GMU 2011 International Conference on Mathematics and Its Applications Yogyakarta, Indonesia http://seams2011.fmipa.ugm.ac.id/index.htm

18 – 22 Jul 2011 Geometry & Topology Down Under — A Conference in Honour of Hyam Rubinstein Melbourne, Australia www.amsi.org.au/index.php/past-events/534-hyamfest-geometry-and-topology-down-under

18 – 22 Jul 2011Workshop on Non-abelian Class Field TheoryPohang, Koreahttp://math.postech.ac.kr/~minhyong/nacftws.htm

18 – 29 Jul 2011CIMPA-UNESCO-MICINN-Indonesia Research School on Non-linear Computational GeometryYogyakarta, Indonesiahttp:www.cimpa-icpam.org/spip.php?article313

21 – 23 Jul 2011The Seventh IMT-GT International Conference on Mathematics, Statistics and its Applications (ISMSA 2011)Bangkok, Thailandhttp://icmsa2011.nida.ac.th

27 – 29 Jul 2011International Conference on Mathematics and Mathematical SciencesSingaporehttp://landrd.com2011/icmms-2011-international-conference-on-mathemati-2/

28 – 30 Jul 2011International Conference on Special Functions & their Applications (ICSFA 2011)Jodhpur, Indiahttp://www.ssfaindia.webs.com/conf.htm

31 Jul – 5 Aug 2011 ISIT 2011 — IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory Saint Petersburg, Russia http://www.isit2011.org/

AUGUST 2011

1 – 12 Aug 2011CIMPA-UNESCO-MICINN-Indonesia Research School on Geometric Representation TheoryBandung, Indonesiahttp:www.cimpa-icpam.org/spip.php?article309

22 – 24 Aug 2011The 3rd International Conference on Control and Optimization with Industrial Applications: COIA 2011Ankara, Turkeyhttp://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~coia2011

24 – 26 Aug 2011 International Conference on Distributed and Grid Computing Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/japan/icdgc/

24 – 26 Aug 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Engineering Tokyo, Japan http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/japan/icamme/

SEPTEMBER 2011

7 – 9 Sep 2011International Conference on Nonlinear mathematics for Uncertainty anf Its ApplicationsBeijing, Chinahttp://www.caas.org.cn/NLMUA2011/

12 – 21 Sep 2011 The 4th MSJ-SI — Nonlinear Dynamics in Partial Differential Equations Fukuoka, Japan http://www2.math.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~tohru/msjsi11/

14 – 15 Sep 2011 ARTCom 2011 — 3rd International Conference on Advances in Recent Technologies in Communication and Computing Bangalore, Karnataka, India http://artcom.engineersnetwork.org/2011/

17 – 21 Sep 2011 Ubicomp'11 — The 2011 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing Beijing, China http://www.ubicomp.org/ubicomp2011

19 – 23 Sep 2011 The 16th Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics (ATCM 2011) Bolu, Turkey http://atcm2011.org/

26 – 29 Sep 2011The 5th Sino-Japan Optimization MeetingBeijing, Chinahttp://lsec.cc.ac.cn/~sjom/index.htm

28 – 30 Sep 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics, Mechanics and Physics Singapore http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/singapore/icammp/

28 – 30 Sep 2011 International Conference on Sensor Networks, Information, and Ubiquitous Computing Singapore http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/singapore/icsniuc/

28 – 30 Sep 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences Singapore http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/singapore/icamcs/

28 Sep – 1 Oct 2011The Mathematical Society of Japan Autumn Meeting 2011Fukuoka City, Japanhttp://mathsoc.jp/meeting/

OCTOBER 2011

19 – 21 Oct 20112011 Fourth International Workshop on Advanced Computational IntelligenceWuhan, Chinahttp://www.iwaci.org

26 – 28 Oct 2011 International Conference on Hadron Physics Bali, Indonesia http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/bali/ichp/

26 – 28 Oct 2011 International Conference on Computer and Applied Mathematics Bali, Indonesia http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/bali/iccam/

Conference CALENDAR


26 – 28 Oct 2011 International Conference on Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences Bali, Indonesia http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/bali/icmms/

NOVEMBER 2011

4 – 6 November 2011Workshop on Algebra, Geometry and TopologyThai Nguyen City, Vietnamhttp://www.math.ac.vn/conference

7 – 11 Nov 2011The 8th International Conference on Numerical Optimization and Numerical Linear AlgebraXiamen, Chinahttp://lsec.cc.ac.cn/~icnonla/index.htm

10 – 11 Nov 2011 AUCC 2011 — Australian Control Conference Melbourne, Australia http://www.aucc.org.au/

19 – 21 Nov 2011 International Conference on Analysis and Its Applications Aligarh, India http://www.amu.ac.in/conference/icaa2011/

19 – 23 Nov 2011 International Workshop on Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent InformationSuzhou, Chinahttp://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc./eds/imw/

28 – 30 Nov 20112011 First Asian Conference on Pattern RecognitionBeijing, Chinahttp://www.acpr2011.org

DECEMBER 2011

1 – 3 Dec 2011The 10th WSEAS International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Man-Machine Systems and Cybernetics (CIMMACS’11)Jakarta, Indonesiahttp://www.wseas.us/conferences/2011/jakarta/cimmacs/

7 – 9 Dec 201119th International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communication Systems (ISPACS)Chiang Mai, Thailandhttp://www.ispacs2011.org

9 – 11 Dec 2011 CiSE 2011 — International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Software Engineering Wuhan, China http://www.ciseng.org/2011/

12 – 16 Dec 2011 MODSIM 2011— International Congress on Modelling and Simulation Perth, Australia http://www.amsi.org.au/index.php/past-events/415-international-conference-in-harmonic-analysis

14 – 18 Dec 2011International Conference on Integral and Convex Geometry Analysis and Related TopicsTianjin, Chinahttp://www.nim.nankai.edu.cn/activities/conferences/hy20111217/index.htm

15 – 20 Dec 2011Twelfth Asian Logic ConferenceWellington, New Zealandhttp://msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/ALC2011

21 – 23 Dec 2011 International Conference on Applied Mathematics and Engineering Mathematics Phuket, Thailand http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/phuket/icamem/

21 – 23 Dec 2011 International Conference on Computational Mathematics, Statistics and Data Engineering Phuket, Thailand http://www.waset.org/conferences/2011/phuket/iccmsde/

28 – 30 December 2011 Statistical Concepts and Methods for the Modern WorldColombo, Sri Lanka http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/shelton/SLSC2011/

28 – 31 Dec 2011 International Conference on Advances in Probability and Statistics — Theory and Applications Hong Kong, China http://faculty.smu.edu/ngh/icaps2011.html

29 – 30 Dec 20112011 International Conference on Applied Physics and Mathematics – ACAPM 2011Chennai, Indiahttp://www.icapm.org/cfp.htm

JANUARY 2012

17 – 19 January 2012 ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA12) Kyoto, Japan http://www.siam.org/meeting/da12/

MARCH 2012

5 – 9 Mar 2012 5th International Conference on High Performance Scientific Computing Hanoi, Vietnam http://hpsc.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/HPSCHanoi2012/

25 – 30 Mar 201237th IEEE International conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing ICASSP2012Kyoto, Japanhttp://www.icassp2012.com

JUNE 2012

4 – 8 Jun 2012Arithmatic Geometry Week in TokyoTokyo, Japanhttp://www.ms.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~t-saito/conf/agwtodai/agwto

19 – 22 June 2012 7th World Congress of Bachelier Finance SocietySydney, Australiahttp://www.bfs2012.com

JULY 2012

8 – 15 Jul 2012ICME 12 International Congress on Mathematical Education COEXSeoul, Koreahttp://www.icme12.org/

9 – 12 Jul 20128th World Congress in Probability and StatisticsIstanbul, Turkeyhttp://www.worldcong2012.org/

9 – 13 Jul 201220th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and SystemsMelbourne, Australiahttp://mtns2012.eng.unimelb.edu.au/

30 July – 3 August 2012 24th International Conference on Formal Power Series and Algebraic CombinatoricsNagoya, Japanhttp://www.math.nagoya-u.ac.jp/fpsac12/index.html

NOVEMBER 2012

7 – 9 Nov 2012Joint International Workshop on Structural and Syntactic Pattern Recognition and Statistical Techniques (SSPR2012)Sendai, Japanhttp://www.icpr2012.org

DECEMBER 2012

1 – 31 Dec 201224th International Conference on Computational LinguisticsMumbai, Indiahttp://www.coling2012-iitb.org

Conference CALENDAR

Australian Mathematical Society

President: P. G. Taylor Address: Department of Mathematics and

Statistics, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

Email: [email protected].: +61 (0)3 8344 5550Fax: +61 (0)3 8344 4599http://www.austms.org.au/

Bangladesh Mathematical Society

President: Md. Abdus SattarAddress: Bangladesh Mathematical Society, Department of Mathematics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka - 1000, BangladeshEmail: [email protected] Tel.: +880 17 11 86 47 25http://bdmathsociety.org/

Cambodian Mathematical Society

President: Chan Roath Address: Khemarak University, Phnom Penh Center Block DEmail: [email protected].: (855) 642 68 68 (855) 11 69 70 38http://www.cambmathsociety.org/

Chinese Mathematical Society

President: Zhiming MaAddress: Zhongguan Road East No. 55, Beijing 100080, ChinaEmail: [email protected].: 0086 62562362http://www.cms.org.cn/cms/

Hong Kong Mathematical Society

President: Tao Tang Director of Joint Research Institute for Applied Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, The Hong Kong Baptist University

Address: Department of Mathematics, The Hong Kong Baptist University, FSC1102, Fong Shu Chuen Building, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong Email: [email protected] Tel.: 852 3411 5148 Fax: 852 3411 5811 http://www.hkms.org.hk/

Mathematical Societies in India:

The Allahabad Mathematical ScocietyPresident: D. P. GuptaAddress: 10, C S P Singh Marg, Allahabad - 211001,UP, IndiaEmail: [email protected]://www.amsallahabad.org/

Calcutta Mathematical SocietyPresident: B. K. Lahiri Kalyani UniversityAddress: AE-374, Sector I, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700064, WB, IndiaEmail: [email protected].: 0091 (33) 2337 8882Fax: 0091 (33) 376290http://www.calmathsoc.org/

The Indian Mathematical SocietyPresident: R. SridharanAddress: Department of Mathematics, University of Pune,

Pune - 411007 India

Email: [email protected]://www.indianmathsociety.org.in/

Ramanujan Mathematical SocietyPresident: M. S. RaghunathanAddress: School of Mathematics, Tata Institute of Fundamental

Research, Homi Bhaba Road, Colaba, Mumbai, IndiaEmail: [email protected]://www.ramanujanmathsociety.org/

Mathematical Societies in Asia-Pacific Region



Vijnana Parishad of IndiaPresident: V. P. SaxenaContact: R.C. Singh Chandel Secretary, Vijnana Parishad of India D.V. Postgraduate College, Orai - 285001, UP, IndiaEmail: [email protected].: + 91 11 27495877http://vijnanaparishadofindia.org/

Indonesian Mathematical Society

President: WidodoAddress: Fakultas MIPA Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, IndonesiaEmail: [email protected] http://www.indoms-center.org

Israel Mathematical Union

President: Louis H. RowenAddress: Israel Mathematical Union, Department of Mathematics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel Email: [email protected].: +972 3 531 8284 Fax: +972 9 7418016 http://www.imu.org.il/

The Mathematical Society of Japan

President: Takashi TsuboiAddress: Taitou 1-34-8 Taito-ku, Tokyo110-0016, JapanEmail: [email protected] Tel.: + 81 03 3835 3483http://mathsoc.jp/en/

The Korean Mathematical Society

President: Dong Youp Suh KAIST Address: The Korean Mathematical Society, Korea Science and Technology Center 202, 635-4, Yeoksam-dong, Kangnam-gu, Seoul 135-703, KoreaEmail: dysuh@ math.kaist.ac.kr [email protected] http://www.kms.or.kr/eng/

Malaysian Mathematical Society

President: Mohd Salmi Md. Noorani Address: School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Selangor D. Ehsan, MalaysiaEmail: [email protected] Tel.: +603 8921 5712Fax.: +603 8925 4519http://www.persama.org.my/

Mongolian Mathematical Society

President: A. MekeiAddress: P. O. Box 187, Post Office 46A, Ulaanbaatar, MongoliaEmail: [email protected]

Nepal Mathematical Society

President: Bhadra Man TuladharAddress: Nepal Mathematical Society, Central Department of Mathematics, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, NepalEmail: [email protected].: 9841 639131 00977 1 2041603 (Res)http://www.nms.org.np/

New Zealand Mathematical Society

President: Charles SempleContact: Alex James (Secretary, [email protected].

ac.nz)Address: Department of Mathematics and

Statistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealandhttp://nzmathsoc.org.nz

Pakistan Mathematical Society

President: Qaiser Mushtag Department of Mathematics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad Contact: General Secretary Dr. Muhammad Aslam



Address: Department of Mathematics, Qauid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, PakistanEmail: [email protected] Fax: 92 51 4448509http://pakms.org.pk/

Mathematical Society of the Philippines

President: Jumela F. Sarmiento Ateneo de Manila University Address: Mathematical Society of the Philippines, c/o Department of Mathematics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, 1101, PhilippinesEmail: [email protected]: 632 920 1009http://www.mathsocietyphil.org/

Mathematical Societies in Russia:

Moscow Mathematical Society President: S. Novikov Address: Landau Institute for Theoretical

Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Kosygina 2 1, 1 7 940 Moscow GSP-1, Russia Contact: John O'Connor [email protected] Prof Edmund Robertson [email protected]

St. Petersburg Mathematical SocietyPresident: Yu. V. MatiyasevichAddress: St. Petersburg Mathematical Society, Fontanka 27, St. Petersburg, 191023, RussiaEmail: [email protected] Tel.: +7 (812) 312 8829, 312 4058Fax: +7 (812) 310 5377http://www.mathsoc.spb.ru/

Voronezh Mathematical Society President: S. G. KreinAddress: ul. Timeryaseva 6 a ap 35 394 043 Voronezh, Russia

Singapore Mathematical Society

President: Chengbo ZhuAddress: Department of Mathematics, National

University of Singapore, 2 Science Drive 2, Singapore 117543

Email: [email protected].: +65 6516 6400http://sms.math.nus.edu.sg/

Southeast Asian Mathematical Society

President: Fidel NemenzoAddress: Institute of Mathematics, University of the Philippines, Diliman, QC, PhilippinesEmail: [email protected]://seams.math.nus.edu.sg/

The Mathematical Society of Republic of China

President: Sze-Bi Hsu Department of Mathematics, National

Tsing Hua University Address: No. 101, Section 2, Kuang-Fu Road, Hsinchu, 30013, R.O.C., TaiwanEmail: [email protected] Tel.: +886 3 571 5131 ext. 31052 Fax: +886 3 572 3888http://tms.math.ntu.edu.tw/

Thailand Mathematical Society

Director: Yongwimon Lenburi Address: Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, ThailandEmail: [email protected]://www.math.or.th/mat/

Vietnam Mathematical Society

President: Le Tuan HoaAddress: Institute of Mathematics, VAST 18 Hoang Quoc Vietnam, Hanoi,

VietnamEmail: [email protected]://www.vms.org.vn/english/vms_e.htm



Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter - Aust MS · the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM)...

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