Volume 36, Number 6 NEWSLETTER November–December 2006 President’s Report Congratulations to Our Authors We learned at press time that Complexities: Women in Mathematics, edited by Anne M. Leggett and Bettye Anne Case, has won one of four 2006 Book Awards sponsored by Alpha Sigma Nu and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universi- ties. The books were judged on the basis of “scholarship, significance of topic to scholars across several disciplines, authority in interpretation, objectivity, presenta- tion, and style,”and theirs was the winning entry in Mathematics and Computer Science. Congratulations, Anne and Bettye Anne (and Vickie and everyone who helped with the conception and execution of this project)! IN THIS ISSUE Women Doing Mathematics Internationally 5 Letter to the Editor This has been a busy period, with AWM members traveling east and west and meeting mathematicians—some of them fellow AWM members—from all over the 8 Book Review world. It has also been a period to work on several projects with our companion society, EWM (European Women in Mathematics). 10 AWM at MathFest 2006 For me, the summer tour began with an unexpected chance to be a member of 15 Happy 100th Birthday! the Canadian delegation to the IMU’s General Assembly in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. (There was a last-minute emergency for one of the Canadian delegates, and 24 AWM in New Orleans he could not make the trip.) The General Assembly is the amazing event, both very formal and delightfully collegial, by which the international community, in the form of the IMU, governs itself. Of course, the IMU does not make the rules by which most of us live our professional lives: it does not set salaries or promotion guidelines for universities, and it does not even have much to say about how jour- nals make their editorial decisions. But it runs the International Congress, chooses the winners of the Fields Medal, and, increasingly, voices the concerns of the world- wide mathematical community. At this meeting, those concerns included electronic A W M communication and digitization of the mathematical archive, capacity-build- ing in developing countries, an interest in mathematics education, and—yes— the status of women. The new Executive Committee (the powerful governing body of the IMU) will have two women among its ten members. Ragni Piene, an algebraic geometer from Norway, serving her second term, is now joined by Cheryl Prager, an algebraist from Australia. Surely this is the first time there have been two women on the EC. The General Assembly also approved a set of The purpose of the Association for Women in guidelines for choosing speakers for the ICM that mentions the Emmy Noether Mathematics is lecture, currently institutionalized in the organization of the Congress. And • to encourage women and girls to study I should add that the whole thing was carried out with great style: we were and to have active careers in the mathe- matical sciences, and housed in a luxury hotel, taken on tours and fed magnificent feasts, and even • to promote equal opportunity and the treated to a concert. equal treatment of women and girls in the Then we went on to the opening of the Congress itself. King Juan mathematical sciences. Carlos presided over the opening ceremony. The news coverage in North America AWM was founded in 1971 at the Joint Meetings in Atlantic City. was dominated by the announcement that Grigori Perelman had refused The Newsletter is published bi-monthly. to accept his award, but the focus at the event was on the winners of all Articles, letters to the editor, and announce- the awards—the Fields Medal and the Nevanlinna and Gauss prizes—and ments are welcome. on the certainty expressed by a number of experts that Perelman’s proof of Circulation: 3500. © 2006, AWM the Poincaré conjecture is complete. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The Emmy Noether Lecture took place on the fourth day of the President Congress. Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat delivered an impressive talk on “Mathe- Barbara Lee Keyfitz matical Problems in General Relativity” and was introduced by former Fields Institute AWM President Linda Rothschild. Later that day was the panel discussion, 222 College Street, 2nd Floor Toronto, Ontario “Moving (Mostly) Forward: Women in Mathematics,” organized and M5T 3J1 Canada moderated by Bettye Anne Case. Eight women joined Case on the panel [email protected] from AWM and from EWM, from the Middle East and South America, President-Elect and the discussion brought lively comments from women and men around Cathy Kessel the world. Both the talk and the panel were very well attended. A first Treasurer Rebecca Herb installment of reports on these activities and on the Math Across Cultures At-Large Members session, along with an ICM photo spread, will appear in the January– Fern Y. Hunt Alice Silverberg February issue. Krystyna Kuperberg Abigail Thompson The ICM attracts over four thousand participants and gets news Dawn Lott Ann Trenk Helen Moore Betsy Yanik coverage in every part of the globe. The second international adventure Clerk reported in this column was on a very different scale: a workshop on “Women Maura Mast in Mathematics” that took place at Banff during the week of September 23–28, Meetings Coordinator with 35 participants and no news coverage at all—not even a printed pro- Bettye Anne Case; [email protected] gram! This event was a consequence of the funding renewal of BIRS (the Newsletter Editor Banff International Research Station), a conference center in the Canadian Anne Leggett; [email protected] Rockies that runs five-day workshops year-round and is now jointly funded Web Editor by the Canadian, US and Mexican governments. The renewal proposal prom- Holly Gaff; [email protected] ised a week devoted to women each year, and last winter Malgorzata Dubiel, 2 Newsletter Volume 36, Number 6 • November–December 2006 A W M who teaches at Simon Fraser University, got a phone call tell- MEMBERSHIP AND NEWSLETTER INFORMATION ing her that the fourth week in September, 2006, was hers! The Committee on Women of the Canadian Math- Membership dues (Membership runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30) ematical Society, as well as the AWM Executive Committee, Individual: $55 Family (no newsletter): $30 Contributing: $125 First year, retired, part-time: $30 was consulted about how to mount such an unprecedented Student, unemployed, developing nations: $20 event. With rather little time to plan, it was decided to make Friend: $1000 Benefactor: $2500 All foreign memberships: $10 additional for postage this a workshop truly on the status of women. Women and Dues in excess of $15 and all contributions are deductible men, in positions of leadership and junior people, mathema- from federal taxable income when itemizing. Institutional Members: ticians and people who had studied women and mathemat- Level 1: $300 ics, were invited, from all three countries in North America. Level 2a or 2b: $175/$150 See www.awm-math.org for details on free ads, free Not everyone could accept the invitation, of course, but the student memberships, and ad discounts. group of 35 people that finally assembled in the glorious Affiliate Members: $250 Institutional Sponsors: Banff Centre during a beautiful early fall week was varied Friend: $1000+ Patron: $2500+ and dedicated. It included no fewer than six past present Benefactor: $5000+ Program Sponsor: $10,000+ and future AWM presidents as well as several institute direc- See the AWM website for details. tors (some overlap there) and representatives. Subscriptions and back orders All members except family members receive a subscription to the We were helped by the recent publication of several newsletter as a privilege of membership. Libraries, women’s studies books and reports on the status of women in science centers, non-mathematics departments, etc., may purchase a sub- scription for $55/year ($65 foreign). Back orders are $10/issue plus and mathematics. A goal quickly formed: to produce a shipping/handling ($5 minimum). forward-looking report that will take account of recent Payment findings and will make specific recommendations intended Payment is by check (drawn on a bank with a US branch), US money to benefit the entire academic mathematical community— order, or international postal order. Visa and MasterCard are also including women, of course. Whether we will achieve accepted. that lofty aim depends on our own diligence and hard Newsletter ad information AWM will accept advertisements for the Newsletter for positions avail- work—but we feel we owe no less to the generosity of able, programs in any of the mathematical sciences, professional BIRS, which sponsored this unique event. (Details of the activities and opportunities of interest to the AWM membership and other appropriate subjects. The Managing Director, in consulta- event, including the participant list and readings may be tion with the President and the Newsletter Editor when found on the BIRS web page. And it is worth mentioning necessary, will determine whether a proposed ad is acceptable under these guidelines. All institutions and programs advertising in the that BIRS will continue to sponsor an event for women Newsletter must be Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity designated. each year—beginning with the 2008 program, there will Institutional members receive discounts on ads; see the AWM website for details. For non-members, the rate is $100 for a basic four- be an open competition for the week. Although the dead- line ad. Additional lines are $12 each. See the AWM website for line for application for 2008 will have passed before this Newsletter display ad rates. newsletter appears, it is worth thinking of good proposals Newsletter deadlines for 2009 and onward.) Editorial: 24th of January, March, May, July, September, November Finally, to return to the international theme: AWM Ad: 1st of February, April, June, August, October, December members were prominent at the gathering, and AWM was Addresses mentioned frequently (particularly in connection with Send all Newsletter material except ads and book review material activities like our workshops for graduate students and to Anne Leggett, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Loyola University, 6525 N.