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Little by SPRING 2005 Little Little by SPRING 2005 DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS NEWSLETTER. VOLUME 19, NUMBER 1. Report from the Chair Special Year in Number Theory and by Krishnaswami Alladi Combinatorics by Miklos Bona HE academic year 2004–05 was an out- standing success highlighted by the Spe- HE Combinatorics and Number Theory cial Year in Number Theory and Combi- Special Year got off to a stormy start. T natorics. This Special Year had the maxi- The Fifth International Workshop on Auto- mum number of featured talks of wide appeal by emi- T mated Deduction in Geometry, organized nent mathematicians because both number theory and by Neil White, took place between September 16 and combinatorics have a long history and also one can de- 18, between hurricanes Frances and Jean, while hur- scribe various important problems in the two areas ricane Ivan was attacking the Florida panhandle. It without requiring too much of a background. The is quite remarkable that with all these threats, all but main events of the Special Year 2004–05 were four con- one participant showed up. The two invited speak- ferences, two in combinatorics and two in number the- ers were Ileana Streinu, from Smith College, and New ory spread evenly over the Fall 2004 and Spring 2005 Jersey Board of Regents Professor Doron Zeilberger, semesters. The activities of the Special Year received from Rutgers University. Several speakers stayed in external support from the National Science Founda- Gainesville for a few extra days, and gave talks at our tion (NSF), the National Security Agency (NSA), and seminars. The longest such stay was that of Dong- the Number Theory Foundation (NTF), and base in- Ming Wang, from Paris and Beihang University in ternal support from the College of Liberal Arts and China, who gave a colloquium on Automated Geo- Sciences (CLAS) and the Office of Research and Grad- metric Reasoning. The main social event of the confer- uate Programs (RGP) of the University of Florida. The ence was a barbecue hosted by Neil and Mary White. main organizers of the Special Year in Number Theory The workshop is organized every two years, and the and Combinatorics were . Gainesville workshop followed . Continued on page 2. Continued on page 3. In this issue: Pictures from the Special Year..................................5 Newsflash .....................................................8 Changes in the Mathematics Major. .8 The eŊŊence Andrews Gives Eight Lectures during Two Months Visit. .9 of mathematicŊ Braiding Mathematics with Life Sciences ......................10 People........................................................12 reŊideŊ in CLAS / Math Dept Honors Thompson and Andrews . 12 itŊ freedom Retirees Emch and Townsend Honored . 14 The Christmas Party and Annual Appreciation Day. .16 Georg Cantor Faculty and Staff Notes . 19 Alumni News . 23 A Note of Thanks .............................................24 2 LITTLE BY LITTLE. SPRING 2005. an International Conference on Pattern Avoiding Per- Report from the Chair mutations, March 7–11, 2005, organized by Professor by Krishnaswami Alladi Bona. This well known conference held at different lo- cations each year, was brought to our department now Continued from page 1. because of our Special Year in Number Theory and Combinatorics. Regents Professor Doron Zeilberger of . Professors Frank Garvan, Miklos Bona, Richard Rutgers University gave a History Lecture during the Crew and Neil White, with the assistance of Professors conference on the revolutionary W-Z method. Here Alexander Berkovich, Norm Levin, and Kevin Keat- W stands for Herb Wilf and Z for Zeilberger. It was ing. fitting that Professor Wilf, who won the AMS Steele Prize with Zeilberger for this contribution, gave the The year’s activities opened with a Workshop on Au- opening remarks for this lecture. tomated Deduction in Geometry, September 16–18, 2004, organized by Professor White in collaboration One of the highlights of the Special Year 2004–05 was with Professor Mira Sitaram (Computer Science) and the two month visit of Evan Pugh Professor George Hoon Hong (North Carolina State University). Profes- Andrews of Pennsylvania State University, who gave sor Donming Wang (Beihang University, China and a series of six lectures on Ramanujan’s Lost Note- CNRS, Paris) gave a featured History Lecture dur- book during January–March, 2005 in the joint Combi- ing the conference. This was followed by an In- natorics / Number Theory Seminar. In addition, Pro- ternational Conference on Additive Number Theory, fessor Andrews gave two general lectures on the joy November 17–20, 2004, organized by Professors Gar- of collaboration in interdisciplinary research, and on van, Berkovich and me. For the first time, this confer- mathematics education. These general lectures were ence brought together researchers in three areas of ad- organized by the CLAS Dean’s Math-Sci Committee. ditive number theory, namely, the theory of partitions Another distinguished speaker in the joint Combina- and q–series, Goldbach and Waring type problems, torics / Number Theory Seminar in Spring 2005 was and bases and their asymptotics. The conference was Hershel Farkas of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, inaugurated by associate Dean Jack Sabin of CLAS. who gave two talks on The theta function in number The work of the Indian genius Srinivasa´ Ramanu- theory and combinatorics. jan dominated the discussions and so it was fitting In collaboration with the France–Florida Research In- that the conference featured a History Lecture by Ra- stitute (FFRI), the department arranged the visit of Pro- manujan biographer Professor Bruce Berndt (Univer- fessor Michel Waldschmidt (Paris), who recently fin- sity of Illinois, Urbana) on the topic Ramanujan: his ished his term as President of the French Mathemati- life, friends, notebooks, and identities for the Rogers– cal Society. Professor Waldschmidt gave a History Lec- Ramanujan functions. ture on the topic Elliptic functions and transcendence. Professor Richard Stanley of MIT, arguably the most The week of March 7–11, 2005, was bursting with ac- eminent combinatorialist in the world, gave the Sev- tivity at the highest level. Fields Medallist Richard enth Ulam Colloquium on October 11, 2004, on the Borcherds of U.C. Berkeley gave the Seventh Erdos¨ topic A survey of lattice points in polytopes for which Colloquium on the topic Feynman path integrals and Dean Neil Sullivan of CLAS made the opening re- the Bernstein polynomial. It was fitting that Dean Sul- marks. Fall 2004 had two other featured talks—a His- livan, who is a physicist, gave the opening remarks tory Lecture by Professor Gyula Katona (Alfred Renyi for this lecture. On March 10, 2005, Professor Carl Institute, Budapest) on History of the extremal prob- Pomerance of Dartmouth University, a world author- lems for set systems, and another History Lecture by ity in the areas of primality testing, factoring large Professor David Bressoud (Macalester College) on The numbers, and cryptography, gave the Second Center alternating sign matrix conjecture. for Applied Mathematics (CAM) Colloquium on the There were conferences of the Special Year in Spring topic A primal screen. Vice-President of Research Dr 2005. The first was on Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry Win Phillips gave the Opening Remarks for this lec- organized by Professors Crew, Keating, and Levin dur- ture. ing February 28 to March 4, 2005. Dean Neil Sullivan The activities of the Special Year 2004–05 concluded inaugurated this conference. This was followed by with the visit of National Academy of Sciences Mem- VOL 19. NO 1. UNIV OF FLORIDA MATHEMATICS NEWSLETTER. 3 ber Professor Richard Askey of the University of Wis- dedicated service and look forward to continued asso- consin who gave three lectures during March 21–22, ciation in the years to come. As part of the Annual Ap- 2005—a featured talk entitled Some history of orthog- preciation Day, April 21, 2005, we had a ceremony in onal polynomials, a lecture on mathematics education, honor of Professor Emch and Ms Townsend. Professor and a talk for Pi Mu Epsilon, our undergraduate math- Charles Radin of the University of Texas, Austin, a for- ematics club. mer student of Professor Emch, spoke about his con- Not all major activities of 2004–05 were part of the tributions. Our colleague Professor Bruce Edwards Special Year in Number Theory and Combinatorics. spoke about the contributions of Ms Townsend. A major event outside of the Special Year program On April 30, 2005, during the CLAS Commencement, was the Eleventh Southeastern Logic Symposium, or- Graduate Research Professor John Thompson was ganized by Professor Jindrich Zapletal. This well es- honored with the title of CLAS Distinguished Scholar. tablished conference series has now found a base in This was in recognition of his many significant contri- Gainesville thanks to the laudable efforts of Professor butions to mathematics in general and in appreciation Zapletal and his contract with the National Science of his role in enhancing the reputation of the math- Foundation. ematics department. On March 7, 2005, a reception Our department has always maintained a healthy bal- jointly hosted by the Mathematics Department and ance between research and teaching. Each year for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was held at the past several years, our department has been recog- the Keene Faculty Center in honor of Professors John nized with a CLAS Teaching Award and this year was Thompson and George Andrews. At this reception, no exception. Two time TIP award winner Professor Thompson was honored for the CLAS Distinguished Theral Moore was given the CLAS Teaching Award in Scholar title, and Andrews was thanked for his role Spring 2005. in enhancing research in the UF mathematics depart- ment through collaborations and lectures. UF Presi- In April 2005, at a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences dent Bernie Machen graced the occasion. The recep- ceremony, Computer Assistant Mr Brian Roberts and tion was held at this time in March to coincide with Administrative Assistant Ms Sharon Easter were rec- the peak period of distinguished visitors in the depart- ognized for completing ten and twenty years of ser- ment.
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