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Notices

REPORT ON THE 13th GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE INTERNATIONAL MATHEMATICAL UNION (IMU)
by Rob Goldblatt

I attended this four-yearly meeting during August 1998 in Dresden, Germany, as the New Zealand delegate. In this report I will give some background on the nature and functions of the IMU, and record the main outcomes of the 13th General Assembly.
Mission The statutory objectives of the IMU are

Organisation The IMU is affiliated to the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). There is an Executive Committee overseeing IMU activities, many of which are associated with various Commissions, including: The General Assembly elected a new Executive Committee, as well as new memberships for ICMI and CDE, and representatives on ICHM. The IMU President for 1999-2002 will be Jacob Palis (Brazil), and the Secretary will be Phillip Griffiths (USA). The ICMI President will be Hyman Bass (USA). There is no International Congress for computer science. Different areas have their own conferences, such as Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) and Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC), but there is no meeting at which theoreticians interact with practitioners in software engineering, architecture etc. The current IMU President, David Mumford, reported that in 1995 the IMU sponsored a meeting in Paris with leaders in computer science to discuss the formation of an International Union of Computing Science and Informatics. This initiative foundered on the lack of support from US computer scientists, who consider that their national organisations (IEEE, ACM) are already sufficiently international, and that there was little to be gained from such a broad meeting. Professor Mumford also expressed the view that ICMI is at a cross-roads, and faces the issue of whether it should evolve into the professional organisation for research into mathematics education, or whether it should be the arena for mathematicians to discuss educational issues with education researchers.
Membership IMU has about 60 member countries, in five Groups. Members of Group N are entitled to send N voting delegates to the General Assembly. (There were around 140 delegates at Dresden.) New Zealand joined in 1970, and is in Group I along with about 25 other countries. Group V contains China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, United Kingdon, United States of America, and the new members Canada, Israel, and Italy, who moved up from Group IV this year. New Zealand has maintained the practice of appointing the President of the New Zealand Mathematical Society as its delegate to the IMU. I observed that this is typical of the policy of many countries. Each member country is linked to the IMU by an Adhering Organisation. In our case this is the Royal Society of New Zealand, which pays the annual IMU subscription and contributes to the expenses of the delegate to the General Assembly. The subscription is a non-linear function of Group number, with Group V countries paying ten times as much as those in Group I. A notable Statute change approved by this Assembly was to allow for affiliate membership of the IMU by professional societies (eg SIAM) and multi-national mathematical societies (eg European Mathematical Society, African Mathematical Society).
International Congress of Mathematicians The IMU Executive Committee appoints the programme committee that determines the scientific content of the ICM, and the committee that selects the recipients of the Fields Medals that are awarded at each ICM. President Mumford observed that there is a need for the ICM to continually rejuvenate as mathematics develops and changes. The tendency towards specialisation can lead to fragmentation into sub-disciplines, producing a decrease in communication and disagreements over which fields should be represented at the ICM, and how many speakers there should be in each. For ICMÕ98, held in Berlin, invited speakers were asked to make a special effort to communicate to a wide audience, and attempts were made to respond to a call for more applied topics by inclusion of sessions on statistics, operations research and the mathematics of computer science. Also, the identity of the Chair of the Programme Committee was made public, to allow dialogue with the community about appropriate speakers and subject area, while the rest of the committee remained anonymous. The Chair (Phillip Griffiths, USA) reported that this practice had worked well.
ICM 2002 It was decided by written ballot that the next ICM will be held in Beijing, China. (The other candidate was Norway, which will be hosting a conference in 2002 to mark the bicentennial of Abel.) The Executive Committee recommended the Chinese application to the General Assembly under the fundamental assumption that all mathematicians of the world will be allowed to participate in the meeting, in accordance with ICSUÕs principle of free circulation of scientists.
Commission on Electronic Information and Communication It was resolved to establish this new Commission (CEIC) to address issues arising from the emergence of the internet and electronic publishing, and the need for international standards on electronic communication between mathematicians. The debate on this matter was lively, traversing many issues. Can the IMU play a coordinating role in a decentralised system of communication? Will member societies that depend on traditional paper publication for revenue be disadvantaged by the growth of electronic journals? Will poorer countries become isolated by their lack of electronic infrastructure or funds to pay for access to foreign archives? What is the definition of the final form of an electronic publication (and what happens if its URL disappears)? What should be the relationship between the IMU and large commercial publishers (including for example the American Mathematical Society) in relation to these matters? An Ad Hoc Committee was appointed, to be chaired by Peter Michard (Germany), which will decide terms of reference and initial additional membership of CEIC. Recommendations will be sent to adhering organisations for approval by mail ballot.
Equity Resolution The following was resolved: ``Building on the resolutions adopted at the 1986 and 1990 General Assemblies, the IMU shall continue to endeavour to attract the participation of all mathematicians. Subfields of mathematics, women and mathematicians in smaller countries and areas should not be overlooked in IMU activities''.
World Mathematical Year 2000 IMU declared in 1992 that 2000 will be World Mathematical Year. The declaration set three goals: A server has been established in Paris which provides information about the progress in organizing WMY 2000 (see below for the URL). A series of Newsletters (six so far) are available from this server, which can also be reached through the IMU website (URL also below). In pursuit of the first goal, a book entitled ``Mathematics Tomorrow'' is being edited by a team chaired by Vladimir Arnold. It is expected to contain articles by more than thirty leading mathematicians, including many Fields Medallists, about how they see the present state of mathematics, its main problems and prospects for the coming century. The book is due for publication by the IMU in mid-1999.
Finances It was reported that the IMU is in good financial health, with reserves being more than twice the annual budget. Consequently it was decided that there will be no increase for the next four years in the annual subscription, which remains at 1200 Swiss Francs for Group I countries. About one-third of the planned expenditure for 1999-2002 is for administration costs, including costs of the secretariat and Executive Committee, contributions to ICSU, production of the IMU Bulletin and the World Directory of Mathematicians etc. The other two-thirds is to support the scientific activities of ICMI, CDE, ICM and various symposia and IMU lectures. Further Information and References
  1. IMU Website http://elib.zib.de/IMU This contains a wealth of information about the IMU and its various activities, lists of member countries, and links to other mathematical sites.
  2. WMY 2000 Paris Server http://www.math.jussieu.fr/jarraud/wmy2000/ma2000.html
  3. Bulletin of the International Mathematical Union, No. 42, June 1998 (Special Number). Provides much information, news and reports, including accounts and budgets, concerning the activities over the last four years of the IMU and its Commissions and other activities. I have a spare copy that I can forward to anyone interested.
  4. Mathematics Without Borders, by Olli Lehto, Springer-Verlag 1998, ISBN 0-387-98358-9. This book is a comprehensive history of the IMU written by a former IMU Secretary. It was launched at the Berlin ICMÕ98.

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