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INTERNATIONAL NEWS Contents News from the IMU NEWS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICAL UNION African Mathematical Union Issue 30 of the Newsletter of the African Mathematical Union Commission on the History of Mathematics in Africa (AMUCHMA) has appeared. This issue contains a (first) list of over 600 examples of African doctorates in mathematics, mathematics education and the history of mathematics. AMUCHMA webpage: www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/AMU/amuchma_online.html. IMU on the web In mid-April, the MSRI at Berkeley held a workshop on digitizing the mathematical literature. A model instance of what 'retronumerisation' (that's franglais) can create is instanced by the work at Grenoble, see www.numdam.org. The IMU's vision of a World Digital Mathematics Library is partly encapsulated by the draft statement at www.ceic.math.ca/News/IMUonWeb.shtml#CEIC8. I hope soon to be able to use IMU on the web to provide you with the agreed endorsed IMU statement better summarising the goals of the project. The greatest inhibition to the vision of retrodigitizing all the old literature sadly is that of copyright. In that context, http://aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/0865_001.pdf makes fascinating reading. Where do you (as likely both writer and reader) stand on these matters? The greatest benefit of digitization is ready immediate access; see the interesting news at www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/17.html and no: because of copyright reasons I cannot guarantee that that URL is a lasting one. Alf van der Poortenon KHACHIYAN AND DANTZIG Mathematics interfaces with the real world in more ways than most of us realize. Many products and services which have a ‘mathematical ingredient’, i.e. mathematical modelling, mathematical simulation, or the application of mathematical software have been utilized in the design and/or production process. In economic terms, mathematics has become a production factor. One of the great achievements of the 20th century in this respect was the invention and development of linear programming (and its subsequent extensions to nonlinear, integer, and stochastic programming). Whenever you fly an airplane, ride a public bus, make a phone call, buy sausages or gasoline , receive a letter, or try to get a loan, somewhere in the supply chain some linear programs will have been solved. Today, there is excellent commercial (and even open source) software available that can handle linear programs with millions of variables and constraints. The economic impact of linear programming was honoured with a Nobel Prize awarded to L.V. Kantorovich and T.C. Koopmans in 1975. The mathematical foundation of linear programming was laid in 1947 by George B. Dantzig with the invention of the Simplex Method. Optimizers view Dantzig as the ‘father of linear programming’. It remains an open problem to this day as to whether there exists a polynomial time version of the Simplex Method. In 1979 Leonid G. Khachiyan employed, in a very surprising way, the Ellipsoid Method to prove that linear programs can be solved in polynomial time, a result that has triggered intensified interest in LP algorithms. These two leading figures of optimization passed away within the couple of months. Leonid Khachiyan died on 29 April, aged 52, and George Dantzig on 13 May, aged 90. They both will be remembered forever for their contributions to optimization theory and practice. BOLOGNA PROCESS Bergen Meeting Ministers from forty or so European countries met in Bergen in May (www.bologna-bergen2005.no) to take forward the Bologna process, which seeks to establish common degree names and some measure of compatibility between those degrees in the countries involved. This has meant major changes for many of our European colleagues, but very little, so far, for UK mathematicians. The meeting in Bergen reinforces this general picture. Doctoral programmes are now included, but the model for these is one to which UK practice largely conforms. Various matters have been hotly debated in the run up to the meeting, but the outcomes seem, at least to me, to be sensible. For instance, PhD programmes should take 3-4 years, full-time equivalent; mobility of doctoral students is encouraged but programmes are not broken down into credit-bearing parts; diversity of practice is recognised. For undergraduate programmes, attempts to encourage, or even impose, common syllabuses seem to have been kicked into the long grass. The proposed overarching qualifications framework is mostly harmless and is firmly subject-based. We still have a problem about fitting undergraduate Masters degrees into the Bologna scheme, but so do other scientific and engineering disciplines. David Salinger MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN Professor Sadayoshi Kojima was elected as President of the Mathematical Society of Japan, as the successor of Professor Yasuo Morita. The London Mathematical Society has a reciprocity agreement with the Mathematical Society of Japan (34-8 Taito 1-chome, Taito-ku, Tokyo 110-0016 Japan; tel: 03 3835 3483, fax 03 3835 3485).
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