NEWS
2000/2001
Issue No 10

Report of the Scientific Director

One cannot expect a lot of variation in the content of the Scientific Director’s Report from year to year. With our present administrative and funding capacities, we are accustomed to organising about eight meetings per year, of notable variety of context and structure. The Year 2000 was, in terms of this basic activity, normal, but with some interesting differences. There was more emphasis than usual on Instructional Conferences, where we organised three. These were our traditional Spring meeting on analysis (in this case Operator Algebras), a distinctly nontraditional meeting on Quantum Computing and a Summer meeting on Inverse Problems.
There was, however, one special millenial aspect to our activities. ICMS was successful in its bid for the contract from the Scottish Executive to run Maths Year 2000 in Scotland. The attendant bustle quite changed the atmosphere at 14 India Street. During the year we were joined by Scott Keir, who was recruited as Co-ordinator of the project. (We wish Scott well in his new position at COPUS, based at the Royal Society in London.) We are all deeply conscious of the need to strengthen the appeal of (and of course attainment in) mathematics in our schools and we hope that our efforts at ICMS have made a positive contribution. For a report from the engine-room, see the report on page 14.

Our planning for future programmes is running smoothly, and we have generally been successful in obtaining generous funding from our traditional sources: EPSRC, EC and the LMS, to whom we are deeply grateful. Other funding agencies, such as the Clay Mathematical Institute, have begun to help us, a much appreciated boost to our planning.

2003 will see the Centenary of Sir William Hodge, a native of Edinburgh and one of the most distinguished of Scottish mathematicians. ICMS will host a high-level meeting in Hodge’s honour in July of that year. Sir Michael Atiyah (Hodge’s student and a staunch supporter of ICMS) is chairing the Scientific Organising Committee for what will surely be one of our most attractive events.

In November 2000 ICMS honoured the memory of another great Scottish mathematician, John Napier, with the organisation (joint with Napier University) of a talk entitled ‘Logarithms and Black Magic in Renaissance Scotland’ by Dr John Fauvel from the distinguished Open University group in the history of mathematics. Speaking personally, I found the lecture charming, informative and provocative, and subsequent socialising with John Fauvel a great pleasure. Thus it came as a great shock to learn of John’s sudden death in May this year.

Unfortunately, this year saw the deaths of two other mathematicians highly esteemed at ICMS. Michel Herman (a notable participant at several ICMS meetings over the past few years) died suddenly in November 2000. More recently, we learnt of the death in May this year of the very eminent Professor Jacques-Louis Lions, a Scientific Advisor to ICMS and a supporter since its inception. Our community is the poorer for the loss of these three colleagues and we salute their memory.

Bridget Read left us in April 2001 after two years in the ICMS offices. We appreciated her cheerful and efficient help and wish her well for the future.

I have been Scientific Director now for nearly eight years and we expect before long a new Scientific Director will take over. Since we do not rush things up here in the North, I won’t go so far as to say that this will be my last report. In any case I will surely have another chance to thank those who have done most to make my duties light. For now, I simply thank all my colleagues, in whatever capacity, who have worked untiringly to maintain our traditional contribution to mathematics in all its manifestations.

Angus Macintyre
September 2001

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