Abel MathRoom

IMU-Net 31: September 2008

A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

CONTENTS

1. Editorial
2. IMU on the Web
3. Emmy Noether lecturer
4. Sad news about Ibni Oumar Mahamad Saleh
5. Subscribing to IMU-Net

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1. EDITORIAL

A year ago two lecturers were sought to participate in the beautiful
project of the French organization CIMPA (Centre International de
Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées) to help rebuild the mathematics
infrastructure in Cambodia. The context of this work was described to
potential volunteers as follows:

"We seek lecturers for intensive 3-4 week courses at universities in the
developing world, at the advanced undergraduate level.  The lecturer
would be assisted by a local mathematics professor who prepares the
students beforehand, assists when necessary during the course, and takes
care of any necessary follow-up. These courses should have a student
audience of 20 or more, be controlled, with examinations, and be part of
a regular degree program at the university at which they are offered.

Past experience in the developing world is desirable but not necessary.
However what is required is tolerance for working in circumstances of
modest resources, unexplained inefficiencies, and limited physical
comforts.

Funds for all expenses, including travel, will be provided; however,
we request that the mathematician's home institution offer leave with
pay during his/her 3-4 week absence.  We believe that a strong case
can be made that cooperation with this program will not only bring
personal and professional benefit to the lecturer, but will also
redound to the credit of the lecturer's institution."

40 volunteers immediately responded!  Such an outpouring of interest
in contributing to the formation of students of mathematics in the
developing world could not be ignored!  The Developing Countries
Strategy Group of the International Mathematical Union, in cooperation
with CIMPA and the U.S. National Committee for Mathematics, have built
on that nucleus of 40 volunteers to launch the "Volunteer Lecturer
Program" (VLP), whose goal is to provide mathematician volunteers to
give intensive month-long courses at universities in the developing
world. The program is quite modest in size due to the
limited financial resources of the sponsoring organizations.  But
mathematicians interested in participating in the VLP,  universities in the
developing world interested in hosting lecturers to teach in the
context described above, and, as importantly, donors desiring to
provide the E.3000 necessary to support a VLP lecturer, should contact:
Sharon Berry Laurenti
Administrative Secretary
Developing Countries Strategy Group of the International Mathematical Union
e-mail: cde@ictp.it

Herbert Clemens
Chair of the DCSG

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2. IMU ON THE WEB: Preserving our History

The use of TeX over the last decade and a half to write papers,
lecture notes and even ephemera has moved from the unusual to the
commonplace. Indeed, some of my younger colleagues can't remember using
anything else but TeX to write mathematics.  For those of us somewhat
longer in the tooth, we remember using other software, which was preceded
by the little golf balls that allowed typing of mathematical symbols,
which in turn was preceded by writing in the mathematics by hand (with
the hope that the typesetting would introduce only a few errors).

One of the happier results of this migration to TeX has been the ability
to put our papers on personal web pages so that anyone with a standard
computer configuration can acquire them. This usually means making a pdf
or a PostScript file available for download. The little postcards that
were mailed to request reprints has now joined those little golf balls
as historical curiosities.

Happily, the papers that were written in the predigital era are not
beyond redemption. They, too, can and perhaps should be made available
for download. In the past several years there have been significant
advances in the ability to scan paper documents. With the right equipment,
scanning several hundred or even a thousand pages is not difficult.

The are two approaches, both of which work well. The first is to use
a standalone scanner. Robust models with document sheet feeders are
available for under $1000. These include the software for doing the
scanning. There are lots of options when using such software, so here
are some suggestions.

When scanning the pages, the software can produce colour, grayscale or
black and white files. Unless there is a compelling reason, black and
white is usually the best choice for older documents. There is also a
choice of resolution: 200, 300, 600 or 1200dpi (dots per inch). Usually
the 600dpi is the best choice.

There are also several different types of files that can be produced
by the scanning software. All of them have some compression: these come
in two types: lossless (no data lost during the compression) and lossy
(some data irretrievable). A lossless compression is the best. There
are also different file formats, the most common being pdf and TIFF.
The pdf files are the ones to put on your web page; they can be read
on any modern computer with readily available software. Note that there
are two different types of pdf files: ones that are image only and those
that are also text searchable. The latter type is preferable, and most
scanners can produce them.

There is also a compelling reason to keep lossless TIFF files. Newer and
smarter software will emerge that will do things we can't do today. If
you keep the TIFF files, there will be no need to rescan since the
information is already in an industry-standard format.

A second approach is to use a photocopier. Many of them come with scanning
software built in: you feed in the pages and the image files are emailed
back to you. Usually there are fewer options than with a scanner. The
default resolution is usually 200dpi, so be sure to set it to 600dpi.
The provisos given above for scanners are also valid for photocopiers.

I recently carried out a two-month project that involved scanning of
some 53000 pages. It really wasn't difficult. In fact the hardest part
of preserving your mathematical history may be taking the staples out
of those old pages.

Our mathematical history is important and worth preserving. A bit of
effort by all of us can produce a significant body of mathematical
literature.  Let's get our history out of the file cabinet and onto
the web!

Michael Doob
Member of CEIC

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3. EMMY NOETHER LECTURER: for ICM 2010 in Hyderabad

Emmy Noether was one of the great mathematicians of her time, someone
who worked and struggled for what she loved and believed in. Her life
and work remain a tremendous inspiration. The 2010 Emmy Noether
Lecture will be presented as a plenary lecture at the International
Congress of Mathematicians in August 2010 in Hyderabad, to honour
women who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to the
mathematical sciences.

There have been Emmy Noether Lectures at four previous ICMs, and this
will be the second time that the selection of the Emmy Noether
Lecturer has been made formally by the IMU. The IMU Executive
Committee has established a committee of five, chaired by Cheryl
Praeger (Australia), to select the 2010 Emmy Noether Lecturer. The
committee will conduct their work over the next 6-9 months, and
suggestions for consideration by the committee may be sent to Cheryl
Praeger at praeger@maths.uwa.edu.au

------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Sad news about Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh

Following the report of an independent enquiry on the events that took
place in the Republic of Chad between January 28 and February 8, 2008,
the French professional societies (SFdS, SMAI, and SMF) have notified
the IMU that almost certainly Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh died in detention
a few days after having been kidnapped from his home on February 3rd,
2008 by the armed forces of Chad. Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, Professor of
Mathematics at the University of N'Djamena was instrumental in the
establishment of higher-education exchanges between France and Chad. He
was one of the leading figures in the democratic opposition to the
government of Chad. For more information and to continue demanding the
truth on the fate of Ibni Oumar Mahamat Saleh, please go to:
http://smf.emath.fr/PetitionSaleh/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

5. SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Newsletter/archive

____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.

IMU-Net 30b: August 2008

Special issue in memory of Henri Cartan (1904-2008)

The world has lost one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth
century. Henri Cartan, a legendary figure in mathematics, died in
Paris on 13 August, at the age of 104 years.

The son of the great mathematician Elie Cartan, his contributions to
mathematics were fundamental, from several complex variables to
algebraic topology and homological algebra. A member of the Bourbaki
group, his participation in the rejuvenation of the French
mathematical school was essential, in particular through his seminar
held at the École Normale Supérieure. His roles as teacher and mentor
were also exceptional, and were felt well beyond national boundaries.

During the critical years after the second world war, Cartan's
enduring friendship with the German mathematician Heinrich Benhke, and
his own personal generosity, contributed greatly to the rebirth of
German mathematics. He was made an honorary member of the German
Mathematical Society (DMV) in 1994.

His natural preoccupation with international cooperation led to his
active involvement with the International Mathematical Union, of which
he was President from 1967 to 1970. As such he chaired the Fields
Medal Committee for the Nice International Congress of Mathematicians
in 1970.

He was actively involved in the defense of mathematicians who were
jailed or discriminated against in their countries, and was an ardent
defender of European unity.

Apart from his professional achievements, Henri Cartan will be
remembered for his personal qualities. He was generous to students,
colleagues and friends, and a vigorous defender of Human Rights.

His death is a severe loss to the mathematical community worldwide.

International Mathematical Union
22 August 2008


An interview of Henri Cartan conducted in March, 1999, and published
in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society may be found at
http://www.ams.org/notices/199907/fea-cartan.pdf

On-line obituaries may be found at
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/34/henri-cartan-nachruf

Memorial Web sites for Henri Cartan
French Academie des Sciences:
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/membres/C/Cartan_Henri.htm
Société Mathématique de France:
http://smf.emath.fr/en/VieSociete/Rencontres/JourneeCartan/NoticeCartan.html

100th issue of the Gazette des Mathématiciens, the news publication of
Société Mathématique de France, carried some tributes to Cartan, two
of which are reproduced in September 2004 issue of the European
Mathematical Society Newsletter
http://www.emis.de/newsletter/archive_contents.html#nl_53


------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMU-Net is a Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International
Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Newsletter/archive/

____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.

IMU-Net 30: July 2008

A Bimonthly Email Newsletter from the International Mathematical Union
Editor: Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France

CONTENTS

1. Editorial
2. IMU on the Web
3. ICMI: the new Executive Committee
4. EMS Prizes
5. Shaw Prizes
6. 7th PACOM
7. Subscribing to IMU-Net

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. EDITORIAL

Dear Reader,

this is summertime, the season of big conferences. You will find below
news about ICME-11, the international congress of ICMI and about the
5th European Congress of Mathematics.
As usual, this issue contains the regular column "IMU on the Web".
I am also pleased to inform you that our colleague, the mathematician
Alf Onshuus from the University of Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia) has
been released by the FARC.
I wish you a good vacation.

Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel
Editor

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2. IMU ON THE WEB: The digitization of the ICM proceedings and related
material

One of the projects the CEIC is pursuing is the digitization of all
the Proceedings of the International Congresses of Mathematicians to
make them readily accessible to the public.

The whole material consists of 62 printed volumes with a total of more
than 35000 pages. The last three ICMs (Berlin, Beijing, Madrid)
produced electronically born proceedings while everything earlier was
only printed and hence will be digitized.

The actual state of the metadata can be seen here:
http://www.math.uni-bielefeld.de/~rehmann/icm_proceedings.html

The list starts a few years before the first ICM of 1897 in Zürich
with the Chicago Congress, held in 1893 on the occasion of the World's
Columbian Exposition at Chicago, which gave birth to the ideas of
international mathematical congresses and to the International
Mathematical Union as a whole.

Felix Klein, in a talk on "The Present State of Mathematics",
described the tendency of mathematics to become more and more
specialized, and therefore evokes ideas for unifying our science and
our scientific efforts, by saying:

           "A distinction between the present and the earlier period lies
           evidently in this: that what was formerly begun by a single
           master-mind, we now must seek to accomplish by united efforts and
           cooperation. A movement in this direction was started in France
           some time since by the powerful influence of Poincar'e.  For
           similar purposes we three years ago founded in Germany a
           mathematical society, and I greet the young society in New York
           and its Bulletin as being in harmony with our aspirations. But our
           mathematicians must go further still. They must form international
           unions, and I trust that this present World's Congress at Chicago
           will be a step in that direction."

(Quoted from "Felix Klein: Present State of Mathematics", Mathematical
Papers read at the International Mathematical Congress, 1893, p. 133-135.)

After having collected the copyrights -- which we eventually got --
our production process goes by first finding a copy of the respective
proceedings volumes, and then in most cases -- horribile dictu for all
bibliophiles -- by cutting them into single pages. This is a
reasonable way to make use of an automatic page feeder.

The University of Michigan Library gave permission for the use of
their images for the years 1897 through 1924.

Scanning is done with 600 dpi, since we found out that this is
necessary for good quality. Math requires the readability of second
order indices, which are typically of 5 point size.

Of course, the next step then is to run the scanned images through an
optical character recognition process in order to make the volumes
searchable.

In the final setup, the single articles of the respective proceedings
will occur with their titles on dedicated web-pages as it is custom by
now in E-journal postings.

Display formats will be DJVU and PDF, but we will also make the
scanned images publicly available, and we will encourage sites to
mirror the collection, as this will contribute to its longevity: The
more copies exist, the more likely is its survival in the long run.

For all who want to help: In addition to the ICM proceedings, we would
like to digitize related material like Programmes, Abstracts, Short
Communications etc.

Here we do not have all the items -- we mostly do not even know what
was published at all. Some of this material is already listed in the
metadata web page mentioned above. In case you are aware of or
possibly even have and want to donate material which isn't listed,
please contact one of us:

Keith Dennis (dennis@rkd.math.cornell.edu)
Ulf Rehmann  (rehmann@math.uni-bielefeld.de)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. NEW ICMI EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

A new Executive Committee of the ICMI-International Commission on Mathematical
Instruction, was elected at the ICMI General Assembly held July 6 in
Monterrey, México.
ICMI is an official commission of IMU and till now the election was
held at the General Assemblies of IMU. It was the first time that the
ICMI General Assembly elected the Executive Committee of ICMI; this
was decided by the IMU General Assembly held in Santiago de
Compostela, August 12-13, 2006.
The members of the 2010-2012 ICMI EC, with the various positions held, are:

PRESIDENT:
William Barton (New Zealand)
SECRETARY-GENERAL:
Jaime Carvalho e Silva (Portugal)
VICE-PRESIDENTS:
Mina Teicher (Israel)
Angel Ruiz (Costa Rica)
MEMBERS AT LARGE:
Mariolina Bartolini Bussi (Italy)
Sung Je Cho (Korea)
Roger Howe (USA)
Renuka Vithal (South Africa)
Zhang Yingbo (China)

The term of this next EC will start on January 1, 2010.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. EUROPEAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY (EMS) PRIZES

THe EMS Prizes are awarded by the European Mathematical Society in
recognition of distinguished contributions in mathematics by young
researchers not older than 35 years. THe prizes are presented every
four years at the European Mathematical Congress.
The 2008 winners are:
Artur Avila (Brazil, France), Alexei Borodin (Russia, USA), Ben Green
(UK), Olga Holtz (Russia, USA), Bo'az Klartag (Israel, USA), Alexander
Kuznetsov (Russia), Assaf Naor (Israel, USA), Laure Saint-Raymond
(France), Agata Smoktunowicz (Poland) and Cedric Villani (France).

The Felix KLein Prize, established by the EMS and the Institute for
Industrial Mathematics, is awarded to a young scientist (or a small
group of young scientists), not older than 38 years, for an
outstanding solution of a difficult industrial problem.
The second Felix KLein Prize winner is Josselin Garnier (France)

For more information:
http://smf.emath.fr/PrixDistinctions/PrizewinnersbookEMS2008.pdf

------------------------------------------------------------------------

5. SHAW PRIZES

The Shaw Laureates 2008 in Mathematical Sciences are:

Professor Ludwig Faddeev, Director of Euler International Mathematical
Institute (Steklov Institute of Mathematics, St. Petersburg, Russia) and

Professor Vladimir Arnold, Chief Scientist of Steklov Mathematical
Institute (Moscow, Russia)

for their widespread and influential contributions to Mathematical Physics.

See
http://www.shawprize.org

------------------------------------------------------------------------

6. 7th PACOM

The president of the African Mathematical Union (AMU) has decided to
cancel the 7th PACOM that was scheduled to be held in Cairo (Egypt) in
August 2008.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

7. SUBSCRIBING TO IMU-NET

There are two ways of subscribing to IMU-Net:

1. Click on http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net with a Web browser and go
to the "Subscribe" button to subscribe to IMU-Net online.

2. Send an e-mail to imu-net-request@mathunion.org with the Subject-line:
Subject: subscribe

In both cases you will get an e-mail to confirm your subscription so
that misuse will be minimized. IMU will not use the list of IMU-Net
addresses for any purpose other than sending IMU-Net, and will not
make it available to others.

Previous issues can be seen at:
http://www.mathunion.org/Publications/Newsletter/archive



____________________________________________________________________________
IMU-Net is the electronic newsletter of the International Mathematical Union.
More details about IMU-Net can be found at: http://www.mathunion.org/IMU-Net/
You can find here, for instance, detailed information about subscribing to
the IMU-Net mailing list and  unsubscribing from it.

     Dear Colleague,

   This is the second announcement for the 15-th conference of the 
 International Linear Algebra Society (ILAS), that will be held in 
 Cancun, Mexico, from  June 16 to June 20, 2008.
  The program includes invited plenary lectures, mini-symposia, and 
 contributed talks.

 Plenary speakers:
  Albrecht Boettcher, Froilan Dopico, Heike Fassbender,
  Luca Gemignani, Leslie Hogben, Erxiong Jiang, Daniel Kressner,
  James Nagy, Juan Manuel Pe~na, Peter Rosenthal, Naomi Shaked-Monderer,
  Ilya Spitkovsky, and Paul Van Dooren. 

 Mini-symposia:
  Combinatorial Matrix Theory.
  Eigenproblems: Theory and computation.
  Implementation and application issues in regularizing
    least squares and total least squares.
  Linear Algebra Education.
  Linear Algebra in Model Reduction.
  Matrix functions and matrix equations.
  Max Algebra.
  Nonnegative and eventually nonnegative matrices.

 Conference venue: Westin Resort and Spa, Cancun.

 Deadlines: 
  Abstract submission, April 14, 2008.
  Payment of discounted registration fee, April 14, 2008.
  Online registration, May 14, 2008.
  Hotel reservation, May 15, 2008.
  Submission of papers for the Conference Proceedings, October 1, 2008.

  The ILAS-08 website:  
                http://star.izt.uam.mx/ILAS08 
  contains additional information, on-line registration and abstract 
  submission forms, and a link to the hotel reservations web-page.
 
  For information about ILAS and the past conferences see the ILAS
  Information Center home-page:  http://www.ilasic.math.uregina.ca/iic/

  We look forward to meeting you in Cancun,
        The Organizing Committee