International Association of Mathematical Physics

News Bulletin September 2003

IAMP Homepage This page shows the latest news items about Mathematical Physics. News items may be submitted to the Secretary.

Please send news and suggestions for forthcoming bulletins to [email protected].

Contents:

  1. Letter from EC-Officers: Request to participants of ICMP Lisbon, some items from the General Assembly, preparation for next ICMP
  2. New Members
  3. Messages from Associate Members
  4. Encyclopedias of Mathematical Physics
  5. Conferences

  1. Dear Members,

    If you attended our Congress in Lisbon please fill out the form as explained at http://icmp2003.net/. Our future funding from the European Commission depends on feedback through this form.

    Among the topics discussed at our General Assembly and the meeting of the Executive were:

    1. There will soon be an option to pay dues easily by a credit card button under a link on our home page. We will be using the services of a Frankfurt-based credit card service provider (B+S) with a good reputation and with major German companies as customers. In particular no credit card information is processed or stored by our servers (even though the button appears on our website) and transactions are properly encrypted. The accepted cards will be VISA, MC, JCB and AMEX.

    2. For our Congress in 2006, two locations, Rio da Janeiro and Prague were discussed in detail. Both bids were excellent and the choice was hard. The decision, taken by the EC after presentations and discussion at the General Assembly, was in favour of Rio da Janeiro.

    3. The financial report raised the issue of members who do not pay dues. After item 1 makes it easier to pay dues, the EC believes it has a mandate from the General Assembly to remove egregious offenders. By the way we apologise for an errant internet robot that periodically tries to extract email addresses from our website but instead sends you all an unofficial message about your dues status.

      Comment on dues: It is natural to ask what you get in return for your dues. Since the dues are small the obvious return is also small, but not negligible. In the first bulletin of the new year we will describe member discounts for books and journals and how to invoke them.

      But the real reason to pay dues is quite different: our society exists in order to promote Mathematical Physics and promotion has at least two aspects. Firstly, we need an internal sense of community. This is the role of our Congress, where we can, in one week, glimpse the whole spectrum of mathematical physics and meet people we might not find in more focused meetings. Your dues played a major role in enabling the recent Congresses. Secondly, careers for our younger members and the overall health of our community depend on our profile within the huge communities of Mathematics and Physics. We all know that the quality of our science is crucial. We also know that engagement in current issues plays a role and that is an important reason to vote for and to nominate members of the EC. But it is also important that our best results not be lost in the noise of these larger communities. Prizes for young members would help them find jobs. DIF prizes for our very distinguished members advertise our achievements. Small conferences that bring in related communities help us with two way communication. Small conferences in less wealthy nations aid our colleagues in those communities. These are all part of our strategy, they are the uses for your dues and the real reason you pay them.

    Quite shortly we will begin the cycle that determines the scientific format of the next Congress. Comments on the last Congress vis-vis designing the next one are welcome, as are comments and ideas on the issues discussed above. Please send them to David Brydges, but do not expect individual replies.

    Yours sincerely

    David Brydges, President
    Jakob Yngvason, Vice President
    Ruedi Seiler, Secretary
    Volker Bach, Treasurer

  2. New Members:

    We welcome the following new members:

    Bindu AnubhaBambahUniversity of Hyderabad, India
    Michael J.GruberUniversität Augsburg, Germany
    Rafaelde la MadridUniversidad de Valladolid, Spain
    Olena VladlenivnaMulTernopil Academy of National Economy, Ukraine
    GunterStolzUniversity of Alabama in Birmingham, USA
    NaomasaUekiKyoto University, Japan
  3. Messages from Associate Members

    1. The Scientific Director, Arne Jensen, of the Danish National Research Foundation: Network in Mathematical Physics and Stochastics, recommends to your attention their scientific program at http://www.maphysto.dk/.

    2. The Institute of Physics Publishing recommends to your attention:

      Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General - An international journal of theoretical physics, www.iop.org/journals/jphysa.

      For information on IOP journals in applied mathematics and mathematical physics, contact [email protected].

    3. The American Mathematical Society recommends to your attention:

      Mirror Symmetry: Kentaro Hori, Sheldon Katz, Albrecht Klemm, Rahul Pandharipande, Richard Thomas, Cumrun Vafa, Ravi Vakil, Eric Zaslow (American Mathematical Society and the Clay Mathematics Institute, 2003). C.f. http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=cmim-1.

  4. Two Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics Projects:
    1. This encyclopedia will have about 500 articles (3000-4000 words) on core material and methods in mathematical physics, including all the subject headings of recent ICMP's, with a modern cross-referencing system particularly suited to electronic searches. The project started with Academic Press in 2001 and will be published by Elsevier in 2005.

      The Editorial Advisory Board includes from S Albeverio, H Araki, A Ashtekar down the alphabet to A Trautman, G Veneziano, CN Yang.

      For more details please visit http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/~tsou/emp/. Suggestions and comments from all members of IAMP are welcome.

      Jean-Pierre Francoise, Greg Naber, Tsou Sheung Tsun. Editors.

    2. Daniel Sternheimer, [email protected], is organising an Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics project which, presently, is a separate project.

  5. Conferences:
    1. The First International Conference on p-adic Mathematical Physics

      p-ADIC MATHPHYS.2003

      The conference will be held at Steklov Mathematical Institute (Gubkin st.8, 119991, Moscow, Russia) from October 1 to October 5, 2003, http://www.mi.ras.ru/~volovich/announc2.doc.

    2. Von Neumann Centennial Conference: Linear Operators and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Budapest, Hungary, 15-20 October, 2003, organizer \linebreak D. Petz, http://www.math.bme.hu/~vonneumann/.

For comments and suggestions send an email to the Webmaster.