ICIAM Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2014
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Managing Editor Reporters C. Sean Bohun Iain Duff University of Ontario STFC Rutherford Appleton ICIAM Institute of Technology Laboratory Faculty of Science Harwell Oxford 2000 Simcoe St. North Didcot, OX11 OQX, UK Oshawa, ON, Canada e-mail: iain.duff@stfc.ac.uk e-mail: [email protected] Maria J. Esteban CEREMADE Editor-in-Chief Place du Maréchal Lattre de Tassigny Barbara Lee Keyfitz F-75775 Paris Cedex 16, The Ohio State University France Department of Mathematics e-mail: [email protected] 231 West 18th Avenue Columbus, OH 43210-1174 Eunok Jung The ICIAM Dianoia e-mail: bkeyfi[email protected] Konkuk University Department of Mathematics Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2014 Editorial Board 1, Hwayang-dong, Gwangjin-gu Thirty years of SMAI: 1983–2013 — Thierry James M. Crowley Seoul, South Korea Horsin 2 SIAM e-mail: [email protected] ICIAM 2015 Call for Mini-symposia 4 e-mail: [email protected] Abel Prize 2014 Press Release 5 Alexander Ostermann 2016 CIMPA Research Schools Call for Projects 6 University of Innsbruck Thierry Horsin ICSU and ICIAM — Tom Mitsui 6 CNAM, Paris, France Numerical Analysis Group ICIAM 2015 Call for Proposals of Satellite Meet- Département Ingénierie Department of Mathematics ings 8 Mathématique Technikerstraße 13/7 ICIAM, Past and Future: A Conversation Be- e-mail: [email protected] 6020 Innsbruck, Austria tween Two Former Presidents — Olavi e-mail: [email protected] Pammy Manchanda Nevanlinna 8 Guru Nanak Dev University Néstor Thome The ICIAM Officers Meeting — Barbara Keyfitz 11 Amritsar, Punjab, India Universitat Politèchnica di ICIAM Workshop in May 12 Department of Mathematics València Call for Nominations for ICIAM Officers: Secre- e-mail: [email protected] Departamento de Matemática tary, Treasurer, Officer-at-Large 13 Roberto Natalini Aplicada Save the Date! 14 e-mail: [email protected] Consiglio Nazionale delle Invited Speakers of ICIAM 2015 15 Ricerche, Rome, Italy, About ICIAM 16 Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo “M. Picone” The ICIAM newsletter was created to express the interests e-mail: [email protected] of our membership and partner organizations and the views Timo Reis expressed in this Newsletter are those of the authors and University of Hamburg do not necessarily represent those of ICIAM or the Editorial Department of Mathematics team. We welcome articles and letters from members and e-mail: [email protected] associations, both announcing events, on-site reports from events and industry news. www.iciam.org Zdenek Strakos c 2013-2014 International Council for Industrial and Ap- Charles University in Prague plied Mathematics (ICIAM). For reprint permission, adver- Faculty of Mathematics and tising requests, potential articles and event notices, please Physics contact: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] Thirty years of SMAI: 1983–2013 Cover illustration: Jennings Hall at The Ohio State University, site of the ICIAM Board meeting in May 2014, adorned with leaves from the Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus glabra), state tree of Ohio. Subscribing to the ICIAM Newsletter The ICIAM Newsletter appears quarterly, in electronic sue is available, please subscribe to the Newsletter. There form, in January, April, July and October. Issues are is no charge for subscriptions. To subscribe or unsub- posted on the ICIAM Web Page at www.iciam.org/News. scribe, visit the webpage given above, or go directly to If you would like to be notified by e-mail when a new is- groups.google.com/group/iciam-news. Thirty years of SMAI: 1983–2013 by Thierry Horsin Last year was the 30th birthday of SMAI, the French It appeared simpler and probably necessary to create this learned society dedicated to “Mathématiques Appliquées independent piece. Mechanics had also at least its own et Industrielles”. The first thing to notice in this name is society. Abroad in Europe, there existed also GAMM, that there is no reference to France in it and trying to which, at that moment, was mainly turned toward East- give a reason could probably lead to a serious historical ern and Central Europe. But SMAI was probably the only debate. society in Europe to include also senior mathematicians in The most likely initial spark leading to the existence of the area of probability. One group, the so-called GAMNI SMAI is a consequence of a French political decision con- (devoted to engineering numerical recipes), existed before cerning the community of academics, precisely the equiv- SMAI and found a natural place inside SMAI later, and alent of what is now named the CNU1. This committee, is still very active. since it is a committee, was changed in 1983 and gathered About 5,000 letters were sent to the whole worldwide the whole community of mathematicians into one unique mathematical community announcing the birth of SMAI. “section”2, whereas before applied mathematicians were Then followed the “congrès d’analyse numérique” of 1983. bound together with computer scientists. The official first member of SMAI was probably C. Bar- Then arose, probably under some tension, the idea to dos, who enrolled during this conference. This encounter promote applied mathematics in this quite large commu- between SMAI and the “congrès d’analyse numérique” nity. Different meetings at the IHP eventually led to the was the prelude to a formal collaboration. The event now constitution of SMAI. The first president was R. Temam, called CANUM (the acronym was decided after one ses- the first secretary and the first treasurer were P. Lascaux sion in Lyon under the name CANU3 and one session and J.-P. Puel (whom I asked to tell me about the his- in Ardèche under the name CANARD4) became then an tory of SMAI in order to write these lines). Of course, official conference organized by SMAI, with a scientific famous mathematicians gathered for these birth councils: committee. For some years now, CANUM takes place ev- J.-L. Lions and R. Dautray were the first benefactors; ery year, and every two years is included in the SMAI statutes were written by F. Murat and J.-P. Puel, secre- Congress. tary staff from CMAP at the Ecole Polytechnique were In 1984, during an informal meeting at the ICIAM proposed by J-C. Nédélec (who became the second pres- Council in Seattle, with F. Chatelin, R. Glowinski, ident three years later) to give some help, P. A. Raviart G. Golub and J.-P. Puel, a proposition was raised: SMAI and many others were there. would organize the following ICIAM in Paris. Mostly pre- Let us mention that there already existed the pared by P. Lascaux with the idea that it could be done two learned societies SMF (“Société Mathématique de in the very center of Paris, this event finally took place in France”), and SFdS (“Société Française de Statistiques”). 1987 at “La Villette”5 and welcomed more than 1500 par- 1In order to simplify, CNU stands for “comité national d’évaluation” and is an evaluation committee constituted by peers. 2“Section” is used in France, for the CNU, as a group of academics of same speciality whose duty is to evaluate their peers. Nowadays 25 and 26 are the two CNU sections dedicated to mathematics. 3CANUT is a french word referring to silk-weavers toiling hard in a district of Lyon. 4Literally ‘duck’. Ardèche is a French county and thus the “Congrès d’Analyse Numérique en ARDèche”. 5Nowadays, an important place for music and expositions, site of “La cité des sciences et de l’industrie”, formerly the “La Vilette” abattoirs and the cattle market up until the 50s. 2 ICIAM Newsletter April 2014 Thirty years of SMAI: 1983–2013 ticipants. The president of the congress was R. Temam. of lack of communication with online teaching, and it is a And then the life of this learned society went on. real challenge to overcome this difficulty. Not only think- Among important things developed by SMAI, one may ing about the evaluation of people attending MOOCs— cite industrial mathematics meetings on the initiative of self evaluation is the only easy way up until now—one has Y. Maday, the ‘mathematics and applications’ series cre- also to think about some individual meetings (not so com- ated by J. M. Ghidaglia, the ECOMAS conference of the mon in France until recent years) in many specific ways GAMNI group, the CEMRACS6, and the different prizes, (to be defined or re-invented) in order to answer ques- among which is the Blaise Pascal prize co-sponsored by tions, help students, and even help them choosing their the French Academy of Sciences. future according to what they expect from these MOOCs. Of course, it was natural that the conferences dedi- Some colleagues shoot films (very impressive, such as in cated to J. L. Lions, as well as the subsequent publica- one of the Lille universities), some record explanations, tions, were organized under the supervision of the SMAI. some use videoconferences, some produce PDFs that are Currently, computers help to manage all these tasks works of art. Strikingly, it is almost surely true that no in- and SMAI has owned its own domain and servers for structor really feels good without watching the expression the past 20 years. With this it has been possible to cre- of some faces just a few meters away. It was interesting ate the ESAIM publications (ESAIM COCV, ESAIM PS, to watch a film, during this birthday party, on learning ESAIM PROC, also continuing M2AN). All the problems how to tie one’s shoes. It was also a masterpiece, but the stemming from the publication process therefore have be- audience was (probably) used to doing so? Could we imag- come SMAI’s concerns too: plagiarism, subscription fees, ine making films to be shown to babies in order to learn etc.