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REPORTS Contents British Association: Mathematical Sciences Section BRITISH ASSOCIATION Mathematical Sciences Section The British Association Mathematical Sciences Section Committee put on an impressive and well-attended programme this year, ensuring that the mathematical sciences were well represented at the BA Festival of Science in York from 9–15 September.
Dr Reidun Twarock, an EPSRC advanced research fellow in the departments of Mathematics and Biology at the University of York, gave a lecture entitled Microworld Adventures: A Symmetry-Approach to Viruses, explaining her research into the structures of viruses by exploring their symmetries. This in turn had led the biologists to a new and deeper understanding of how viruses function and enabled them to predict other structures. This was followed by a reception sponsored by the more maths grads project, at which a number of mathematical organisations exhibited their work. The following day, Section President Professor Robin Wilson donned
18th century dress to transform himself into Leonhard Euler. He then
went on to describe the life and works of this prolific Swiss mathematician
who was born 300 years ago. Cambridge University's Professor Keith Moffat
spoke on Euler's work on dynamics whilst Professor Chris Budd of the
University of Bath also dressed up, this time as Johann Bernoulli, to
talk about Euler's fabulous formula ( ISLAND III Algebraic Aspects of Integrability This workshop took place at the beginning of July this year, supported by an LMS conference grant. This helped to support one of our invited speakers, as well as research students at UK universities and participants from former Soviet Union countries. The workshop was held on the splendidly rugged and peaceful Island of Islay. The isolated setting drew the participants together and encouraged interaction. The main speakers included Date, Dubrovin, Noumi, Ruijsenaars, Varchenko and Veselov, whose talks concerned problems of behaviour of solutions of integrable equations, orthogonal polynomials and discrete integrable systems, interrelation between classical integrable systems and soliton solutions of wave equations, Calogero-Moser systems and the Bethe ansatz method. A highlight of the workshop was the talk by McKay who pointed out those integrable systems structures appeared in the theory of modular functions. Some further talks were presented on other algebraic aspects of integrable systems. The overall number of scheduled talks was deliberately limited so that participants could benefit from discussions in the remaining time. This structure proved very successful. In particular there was ample opportunity to discuss the work of younger participants based on their poster presentations leading to a fruitful exchange of ideas and forming a basis for future developments in the field. All of the participants clearly enjoyed the meeting and the social aspects were enhanced by the atmosphere and the outstanding cuisine at the Machrie Hotel and demonstrations of the art of whisky making by local distillers. We have been encouraged to start thinking about Island IV for the year 2011. For the purposes of dissemination the presentations appear on the conference website www.maths.gla.ac.uk/island/island3 and a refereed special issue of the Glasgow Mathematical Journal will be devoted to the conference. Claire Gilson 
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= -1). Another mathematics
session at the BA Festival looked at careers in mathematics from the
perspective of How mathematics changed my life, and Professor
Budd gave a further session as part of the schools' programme. The Section
committee already has plans in place for next year's festival which
will be held in Liverpool.