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Si è svolto a Beijing (Pechino), dal 20 al 28 agosto 2002, il Congresso Internazionale di Matematica.
[Riportiamo alcune notizie, tratte dal News ufficiale (in inglese) del congresso. La parte in lingua italiana, di commento o di ulteriore informazione, è del sottoscritto - g.anichini -
La parte relativa all'Assemblea di Shanghai è di Alberto Conte.].
The opening ceremony of the 24th session of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM2002) was held on August 20 in Beijing. The current session of the ICM was organized by the Chinese Mathematics Society (CMS) under the auspices of the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
Il primo Congresso del nuovo millennio ha fatto seguito al Congresso di Berlino del 1998.
"This is an important event for the international community of mathematicians,'" says chairman of the ICM2002 local organizing committee Ma Zhiming, CMS president and a research professor at the Academy of Mathematics and System Sciences, CAS. About 4,200 scholars from 101 countries will participate in the eight-day quadrennial meeting to share the latest developments and results. There will be 20 one-hour plenary lectures, 174 45-minute lectures specifically invited by the meeting, about 1,200 15-minute short communication reports and 90 or so posters on display at the session.
In addition, 46 satellite conferences will be held before or after the session until August 30 in 32 cities such as Shanghai, Moscow, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Macao, Hangzhou and Xian. The local organizing committee of the convention will host a series of public talks by inviting celebrated Chinese and foreign scientists such as Prof. Wu Wenjun, chairman of the ICM2002 and winner of China's Supreme S and T Award in 2001 to deliver speeches on the application of mathematics and its influence on other subjects to the public. On August 19, Stephen Hawking, a Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, had given a public speech titled "Brane New World."
Una delle conferenze più applaudite è stata quella di John Nash,"Studying Cooperation in Games via Agencies" alla presenza dei (pochi) matematici che erano riusciti ad avere un biglietto di ingresso e di (molti) cittadini di Pechino, interessati alla conferenza.
This session is the first ICM convention ever held in a developing country over the one-century or so history of the Congress. It has a special significance to China. At the meeting, there will be 11 scholars from the Chinese mainland, eight Chinese mainlanders now working abroad and two mathematicians of Chinese origin will give 45-minute lectures. This is unprecedented in the ICM history and convincingly indicates that mathematics in China now is enjoying a steady and sustained advancement, says the local organizing committee at a news release.
Nella cerimonia inaugurale il numero due del governo cinese ha fatto presente che negli ultimi due anni il budget stanziato dal governo cinese per la matematica è raddoppiato.
È nel programma di ogni Congresso Internazionale consegnare, durante la cerimonia inaugurale, le Medaglie FIELDS per la Matematica. A Pechino la consegna è stata fatta direttamente dal premier della Repubblica popolare della Cina Jiang Zemin, che ha onorato il congresso con la sua presenza in questo giornata particolare.
Riportiamo qui di seguito alcune notizie sia sui premi (Fields medals e Nevanlinna prize), sia sui premiati.
At the opening ceremony, upon the invitation of IMU chairman Jacob Palis, Chinese President JIANG ZEMIN awarded golden medals to the 2002 laureates of the Fields Medal Prize:
Prof. Laurent Lafforgue
from Paris-based Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES)
and
Prof. Vladimir Voevodsky
from the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. The prestigious Fields Medal is considered highest honor and prize in mathematics, equivalent to that of the Nobel Prize as there is no mathematics category in the Nobel Prize awards. Also at the ceremony, Indian mathematician Madhu Sudan was awarded 2002 Nevanlinna Prize.
The Fields Medal is often described as "the Nobel prize for mathematics." Presented by the International Mathematical Union, the prize is named for the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields (1863-1932), who chaired the committee that established the prize in 1931. Though there is no formal rule to this effect, Fields Medals have traditionally been presented to young mathematicians (no older than 40).
The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in mathematical aspects of information science was established by the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union IMU in April 1981.
One year later, in April 1982, the IMU acepted the offer by the University of Helsinki to finance the prize. The prize was named the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in honor of Rolf Nevanlinna (1895-1980), who had been Rector of the University of Helsinki and President of the IMU and who in the 1950s had taken the initiative to the computer organization at Finnish universities. More recently, the Executive Committee of IMU clarified that the Nevanlinna Prize is to be awarded for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences, including:
Presentiamo una breve biografia dei tre premiati. I premiati con la Medaglia Fields 2002 sono stati:
Laurent Lafforgue, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Bures-sur-Yvette, France.
The first of this year's Fields medalists, Laurent Lafforgue, was honored for making major advances in the "Langlands Program," based on a visionary set of conjectures by Robert Langlands that sketch out deep connections between number theory, analysis, and group representation theory. Lafforgue proved the global Langlands correspondence for function fields, building on the work of Vladimir Drinfeld (also a Fields medalist, in 1990). Lafforgue's work confirms the fundamental insights of Langlands and is an important step towards the realization of the full program. It is said to be "characterized by formidable technical power, deep insight, and a tenacious, systematic approach." The second 2002 Fields medalist is Vladimir Voevodsky. Vladimir Voevodsky, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. He is recognized for developing new cohomology theories for algebraic varieties, thereby providing new insights into number theory and algebraic geometry.
Vladimir Voevodsky got his BA from Moscow University and his Ph.D. from Harvard. He was a Junior Fellow of Harvard Society of Fellows and an Associate Professor at Northwestern University. He is currently a full Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He was honored for developing a new cohomology theory for algebraic varieties. Voevodsky's "motivic cohomology" (the name is related to Alexander Grothendieck's visionary idea that there should exist objects, called "motives", that establish the connection between number theory and algebraic geomtry) builds on an idea first proposed by Andrei Suslin. Among other things, it creates a strong connection between algebraic varieties and algebraic K-theory and it provides a framework for studying many new cohomology theories. One consequence of Voevodsky's work is a proof of the Milnor Conjecture, for many years the main open question in algebraic K-theory. His work is said to be "characterized by an ability to handle highly abstract ideas with ease and flexibility and to deploy those ideas in solving quite concrete mathematical problems." Over the last ten years his mathematical research interests involved the development of motivic homotopy theory - an algebro-geometric analog of homotopy theory in topology. He leads a program in motivic homotopy theory at IAS in Princeton.
The 2002 Nevanlinna Prize winner is: Madhu Sudan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is recognized for contributions to probabilistically checkable proofs, to non-approximability of optimization problems, and to error-correcting codes.
The 2002 Nevanlinna Prize went to Madhu Sudan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in recognition of his work on "probabilistically checkable proofs, to non-approximability of optimization problems, and to error-correcting codes." Sudan's work is wide-ranging and brilliant. He was a main player in the development of methods for a "verifyer" (typically a computer) to establish with a high degree of probability whether a proof is correct. His work on non-approximability of solutions to certain problems relates to the "P versus NP" problem in theoretical computer science, showing that for many NP-hard problems approximating a solution is just as difficult as finding the actual answer. In the theory of error-correcting codes, Sudan's work showed that certain coding methods could correct many more errors than was previously thought possible.
Riportiamo la composizione della commissione scientifica, quella cioè che ha definito il programma scientifico dei lavori, della commissione Fields Medal e della commissione Nevanlinna Prize. La composizione di tali commissioni è stata resa nota all'inizio della seconda giornata dei lavori.
Commissione scientifica Yuri Manin (Chair), John Ball, Franco Brezzi, Gerard Laumon, Lazslo Lovasz, Tetsuji Miwa, Peter Sarnak, Alain-Sol Sznitman, Gang Tian, Michele Vergne, Wen-Tsun Wu.
Yakov Sinai (Chair), James Arthur, Spencer Bloch, Jean Bourgain, Helmut Hofer, Yasutaka Ihara, H. Blaine Lawson, Sergei Novikov, George Papanicolaou, Efim Zelmanov.
Commissione Nevanlinna Prize Michael Rabin (Chair), Andrei Agrachev, Ingrid Daubechies, Wolfgang Hackbusch, Alexander Schrijver.
Al Congresso di Pechino hanno preso parte oltre 4200 matematici
provenienti da tutti i continenti.
I partecipanti europei sono stati circa il 24% del totale (ovvero
circa 980), provenienti da 28 paesi (non abbiamo
considerato i paesi dell'ex Unione Sovietica: dalla Russia sono
venuti in 331, dall'Ucraina 95, ecc...).
Il numero di partecipanti (europei) è vario da paese a paese, da un
solo partecipante per l'Albania e la Serbia, fino ai 167 della
Germania, i 133 della Francia ed i 117 del Regno Unito.
I partecipanti italiani sono stati indicati in 93.
Riportiamo i nomi di coloro che hanno "partecipato" con conferenze o
comunicazioni (in quanto
presenti sul programma ufficiale).
Naturalmente è possibile che qualcuno non sia stato presente
per motivi personali o di difficoltà di volo.
Ricordiamo infine che ad ogni partecipante sono stati distribuiti due volumi di Abstracts (Plenary Lectures, Invited Lectures e Short Communications) e due volumi (per complessive quasi 1800 pagine) con i testi completi delle Invited Lectures.
Il volume con i testi completi delle Plenary Lectures sarà inviato al recapito di ciascun partecipante appena pronto. Tali volumi sono stati editi dalla Higher Education Press (http://www.hep.edu.cn)
Alberto BRESSAN(Scuola Internazionale di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) di Trieste): Hyperbolic systems of conservation laws in one space dimension
Luigi Ambrosio (Scuola Normale Superiore - Pisa),
Optimal transport maps in Monge-Kantorovich problem
Umberto Bottazzini (Università di Palermo), "Algebraic truths" vs "Geometric fantasies": Weierstrass's
response to Riemann
Giovanni Forni (Nortwestern Un.), Asymptotic behaviour of ergodic integrals for "renormalizable"
parabolic flows
Alfio M. Quarteroni (Poly. Lausanne),
Mathematical and numerical modelling of the cardiovascular SYST
Sez. 6 Algebraic and Complex geometry:
Marina Marchisio (Univ. Torino)
Sez. 9 Operator algebra and functional analysis:
Fabio E. Cipriani (Polit. Milano)
Sez. 11 Partial Differential Equations:
Tonia Ricciardi (Univ. Napoli "Federico II")
Sez. 12 Ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems:
Giuseppe Anichini (Univ. Firenze)
Sez. 13 Mathematical physics:
Paolo Biscari (Polit. Milano)
Sez. 16 Numerical analysis and scientifing computing:
Daniele Boffi (Univ. Pavia), Lucia Gastaldi (Univ. Brescia), Fausto Saleri (Polit. Milano)
Sez. 17 Applications of mathematics in sciences :
Gianfranco Gambarelli (Univ. Bergamo)
Sez. 18 Mathematical education and popularization of mathematics:
Michele Emmer (Univ. Roma)
(Nota: quest'ultimo intervento, per il grande interesse suscitato e contestualmente all'assenza dei successivi speakers previsti dal programma, si è in effetti trasformato in una comunicazione di ben 45 minuti.)
L'ICM 2002 è stato
preceduto, secondo la
consuetudine, dalla XIV
Assemblea Generale dell'IMU
(International Mathematical
Union) che si è tenuta a
Shanghai, presso il Pudong Conference Centre, nei giorni 17 e 18 agosto.
L'Italia era rappresentata dalla delegazione composta da Alberto Conte,
Franco Brezzi e Aljosa Volcic. L'Assemblea ha eletto il nuovo Executive
Committee, che resterà in carica per il periodo 2003-2006 e che
risulta
così composto:
President: John M. Ball (United Kingdom)
Vice-Presidents: Jean-Michel Bismut (France), Masaki Kashiwara (Japan)
Secretary: Phillip A. Griffiths (USA)
Members: Andrey A. Bolibruch (Russia), Martin Grötschel (Germany),
Zhi-Ming Ma (China), Ragni Piene (Norway), Madabusi S. Raghunathan (India)
Sono altresì state elette la Commission for Development and Exchange (CDE) e l'International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI) che rimarranno in carica nel prossimo quadriennio.
L'Assemblea ha anche scelto la sede del prossimo ICM 2006, che si
terrà a Madrid (Spagna) nell'agosto del 2006, e che sarà
preceduto dalla XV Assemblea Generale dell'IMU, che si terrà a
Santiago de Compostela. Sono inoltre state discusse varie questioni di
ordinaria amministrazione organizzativa e finanziaria ed è stato
approvato il documento sulle "Best Current Practices: Reccomendations on
Electronic Information Communication" proposto dal Committee on Electronic
Information and Communication (CEIC) dell'IMU, reperibile sul sito web
dell'IMU all'indirizzo http://elib.zib.de/IMU/IMU_Committees/best_practices.html
(Alberto Conte)
La prima cifra riguarda il numero dei corsi di laurea attivati, la seconda il numero degli immatricolati:
Laurent Schwartz was born on March 5th, 1915; he was a brilliant student at École Normale Superieure (rue d'Ulm). During World War II, he finds himself in Clermont-Ferrand with other future founding members of the Bourbaki group, before joining the University of Nancy.
His discovery of the theory of distributions is fully recognized by his being awarded the Fields Medal in 1950. His teaching in École Polytechnique has left memorable traces for thousands of students, for whom the human qualities of Laurent Schwartz cannot be separated from his mathematics.
Laurent Schwartz used to emphasize that his life held on three pillars: mathematics, political engagement and butterflies, as his autobiography (Un mathématicien aux prises avec le siècle, Odile Jacob, 1997) amply demonstrates.
Many mathematicians now feel orphaned.
Il memoria del marito recentemente scomparso, la signora Charlotte, moglie di Clifford A. Truesdell, ha donato alla biblioteca della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa la raccolta di libri costituenti la biblioteca dell'illustre matematico scomparso. In tale raccolta sono presenti opere di ambito matematico e fisico del XIX e XX secolo, un folto nucleo di edizioni seecentesche e settecentesche di classici del pensiero scientifico e filosofico (Galileo, Scuola di Galileo, Bernoulli, Newton, Eulero Laplace, Lagrange) ed opere connesse alla sua attività di direttore delle riviste ``Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis" e "Archive for History of Exact Sciences". Quanto prima tale materiale sarà reso disponibile per tutta la comunità scientifica.(ab)