[CvGmt News] IMU-Net 51: January 2012

Sat Feb 4 12:02:33 CET 2012

IMU-Net 51: January 2012
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. Ramanujan Prize
4. Passing away of Salah Baouendi
5. Mathematics of Planet Earth
6. Subscribing to IMU-Net

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1. EDITORIAL

When I visited ETH-Zuerich in 1998, I talked with Prof. Juergen Moser
about the IMU; he was at that time in the Executive Committee (EC) as
the Past President of IMU, and he played a major role in helping China
to join IMU. Juergen told me that people had very high expectation of
the IMU and our Union should try its best to help mathematicians all
over the world. When the Chinese Mathematical Society held the ICM
successfully in 2002, the Chinese mathematicians, including myself,
thus strengthened our deep feeling of the important role which IMU
plays in the world. In the General Assembly in Bangalore of 2010, I
was very fortunate to be elected by the IMU members to serve on the
Executive Committee; I gladly took on this responsibility and duty to
serve our mathematical community in this role.

Now I have being working in the EC for a year and, we have dealt,
together, with many issues. I am now even more conscious of the
expectations of mathematicians in the world on IMU. There is no
doubt that ICM is the most important job of IMU. But besides that,
there are many issues important for our mathematical community that
IMU needs to deal with carefully. In dealing with these issues, I feel
that the principle of fair and equity is most important. In many
issues, for example, geographical and gender considerations are
important to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity for his/her
development and future.
Here certainly special attention should be paid to people in the less
developed areas, by listening to them and providing more chances to
them whenever it is possible.

One example is the journal ranking problem which IMU is now discussing.
This issue is closely related to how evaluating the academic level of
a person or of a scientific work.
 From my experience in China, this is a very sensitive and important
issue. Now many mathematicians in China including myself believe that
such an issue needs to be judged by certain experts via understanding
the scientific works which have been done. Here prizes, awards,
publications in certain high ranked journals, etc. are important in
evaluating the level, but these conditions may not be the only
criteria and even may not be necessary. For example, historically in
China there do exist some research papers which were published in the
university journals in Chinese and were recognized to be mathematically
very important later. We do need to understand and view things
dialectically. Mathematics is developing, and so does our international
community. Therefore we need to consider things via a developing point
of view. In the new year celebration meeting of the Chinese
Mathematical Society, I informed and encouraged colleagues to join the
running discussion on journal
ranking and pricing by expressing their own opinions directly on the
blog. I believe that with sufficient information from all over the
world, IMU will find a relatively better solution on this issue.

As the leading group of IMU, the opinions of the EC on many issues are
very crucial. Here the President and the Secretary certainly play very
important roles, and they have done great contributions to our
community. I think that to support and help their work, to provide
useful suggestions, and to reflect opinions from different angles
including from both the points of view of developing and developed
countries and areas are very important. As a member of EC, I am looking
forward to work with others to serve our mathematical community better.

Yiming Long
Member at Large, IMU Executive Committee

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2. IMU ON THE WEB

1. blog.mathunion.org: status and prospects
So, you didn't realize that IMU and ICIAM are sponsoring a blog
concerned with issues related to Mathematical Journals?
It's understandable that this is a challenging topic; while there have
been close to 50 comments input in response to the suggested
activities and questions, we need to hear from more of you.

Thanks to mentions in various society mailings, the request for
comments has been received by many, especially in Canada and in
Europe. But mathematicians within the US to date have registered few
comments.

The group appointed to moderate the blog had a few technical struggles
at first, and the setup can be improved in specific ways, such as
admitting active links in comment text.  In the past few weeks RSS
feeds were added.  In general, we are grateful for the thoughtfulness
of the individuals who have written, and we hope to hear from more
people.

The blog was originally envisioned to have a limited lifetime, but
this may be re-evaluated, depending upon the level of participation
and the state of the ongoing discussion threads.

Peter Olver, olver at math.umn.edu CEIC chair and chair of moderating group:
Doug Arnold      (ICIAM)    arnold at umn.edu
Carol Hutchins   (IMU)      hutchins at nyu.edu
Nalini Joshi     (ICIAM)    nalini.joshi at sydney.edu.au
Ming-Chih Lai    (ICIAM)    mclai at math.nctu.edu.tw
Fabrice Planchon (IMU)      fab at unice.fr

2. Comprehensive update on MathJax
CEIC has intended to prepare a short write up on MathJax, which is the
de facto best way to display mathematical expressions within HTML.
However, we would have difficulty doing better than the excellent
article by Davide Cervone, which has appeared in the Notices of the AMS.
Highly recommended read:   "MathJax: a Platform for Mathematics on the
Web" Notices of the AMS, vol 59, no 2  (2012)
http://www.ams.org/notices/201202/rtx120200312p.pdf

3. Scholarly publishing garners media attention
Forbes magazine technology columnist Tim Worstall, in his piece dated
1/28/2012, draws attention to ongoing concerns about the business
model of large scholarly publishers.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/01/28/elseviers-publishing-model-might-be-about-to-go-up-in-smoke/

He points to a petition on the internet, started by mathematicians,
but now signed by many other scholars and scientists.  While neither
IMU nor CEIC endorse this petition, we suggest it is a sign of our
times.
http://thecostofknowledge.com

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3. RAMANUJAN PRIZE

- Philibert Nang from Gabon wins the Ramanujan Prize
Professor  Philibert Nang (44), École Normale Supérieure, Laboratoire de
Recherche en Mathématiques, Libreville, Gabon, has been named the winner of
the 2011 Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries.
The Ramanujan Prize is awarded jointly by the Abdus Salam International
Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund, and the
International Mathematical Union.
The Prize is in recognition of Professor Philibert Nang's outstanding
contributions to the algebraic theory of D-modules.
The Ramanujan Prize is supported financially by the Norwegian Niels Henrik
Abel Memorial Fund. The Ramanujan Prize carries a $15,000 cash award.

-Call for nominations for the 2012 Ramanujan Prize
The deadline for receipt of nominations for the 2012 Prize is 1 April
2012. Nominations should be sent to math at ictp.it describing the work
of the nominee in adequate detail. The winner will be selected by 15
June. The award ceremony will take place at ICTP in September.

For more information
http://www.abelprisen.no/en/

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4. PASSING AWAY OF PROFESSOR SALAH BALOUENDI

SALAH BAOUENDI 1937-2011
Salah Baouendi, a former member of the IMU Executive Committee, died
at his home in California on December 24, 2011.

Salah was born in Tunis, Tunisia, on October 12, 1937 and moved to
France to complete his high school studies. He took a bachelor's
degree in mathematics at the University of Paris in 1961. After
doctoral studies at Orsay he held professorial positions at the
Universities of Nice, Tunis, and Paris. In 1971 he moved to the United
States and joined the mathematics faculty of Purdue University where
he served for several years as Head of Department. In 1988 he moved to
the Mathematics Department of the University of California in San
Diego, where he continued his groundbreaking research and was a very
popular teacher.

Salad Baouendi was an internationally reknown researcher in analysis
who obtained fundamental results in the field of partial differential
equations and in the theory of higher dimensional complex spaces. He
was the author of more than 140 articles and books. An invited speaker
at ICM 1974 in Vancouver, his other awards and honors include the AMS
Stefan Bergman Prize which in 2003 he shared with Linda Rothschild,
and his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He
served on several leading editorial boards and was the founding
co-editor-in-chief of two major mathematical journals, Communications
in Partial Differential Equations and Mathematical Research Letters.

His commitment to the national and international mathematical
community was considerable. After chairing the U.S. National Committee
for Mathematics, he served on the Executive Committee of the IMU for
the period 2006-2010. In spite of illness he took a very active part
in its deliberations on a number of sensitive matters, including the
question of whether or not to establish a stable office for the Union.
He was also on the first Board of Trustees of the Friends of IMU,
where his expert advice was invaluable during this crucial period.

Salah is survived by his wife and collaborator, Linda Rothschild,
a son and a daughter, three grandchildren and two stepsons. His wisdom,
kindness and balance will be grievously missed
in the work of the Union.

László Lovász,  Past President of IMU

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5. MATHEMATICS OF PLANET EARTH 2013 (MPE 2013)

Mathematics of Planet Earth Competition for an open source exhibition
of virtual modules.
This competition is part of the world initiative “Mathematics of
Planet Earth 2013” (MPE2013).
The modules submitted to the competition will be part of the
Mathematics of Planet Earth Open Source Exhibition of Virtual Modules.
They could be reproduced and utilized by many users around the world
from science museums to schools under a Creatice Commons license.
Examples of modules or themes to be covered are available on the website.
The competition will be open from January 2012 to September 15, 2012.
www.mpe2013.org/competition

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6. 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 at 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
emails 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/imu-net/archive/
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