Professor Jacob Palis
Secretary
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1. Organisation The Executive Committee had its third meeting in Madrid on 31st August - 1st September 1997. Beside in meetings, the work of the EC is conducted by correspondence and electronic communication under the direction of the President and the Secretary.
As of 1st January 1997, Latvia and Uruguay have been adopted as new members of IMU and hence of ICMI as well. Also ICMI continues to receive applications from countries to be co-opted as non-IMU member states of ICMI in accordance with the terms of reference. In 1997 it was decided, with the endorsement of the International Mathematical Union, to co-opt Indonesia as a non-IMU member of ICMI. The Adhering Organisation is the Indonesian Mathematical Society. Other applications were considered by the EC in 1997. Final decisions are expected to be made in 1998.
A number of countries have not (yet) appointed National Representatives in ICMI. These are Georgia, Greece, Latvia, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, Slovenia, and Uruguay.
It is part of ICMI's general policy to encourage member states to establish National Sub-Commissions of ICMI. In 1997 the EC was not informed of the establishment of new National Sub-Commissions.
2. ICMEs The next International Congress on Mathematical Education, ICME-9, will be held in Makuhari, Chiba, Japan, in 2000. Preliminary dates are 31 July to 7 August. An International Programme Committee was appointed in 1996. It is chaired by Professor Hiroshi Fujita, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan. The list of members was published in the ICMI Bulletin No. 42, June 1997, p. 17. The IPC has been working for most of 1997 by means of electronic post under the direction of Professor Fujita. The IPC will meet for the first time in the beginning of March 1998.
No official bids have been received by the Executive Committee with respect to ICME-10 in 2004. However, Brazil has produced a declaration of intent to let ICMI know that it is preparing a bid to host this Congress.
3. ICMI Studies The mounting and conducting of so-called ICMI studies on crucial themes and issues in mathematics education were continued in 1997. The ICMI studies are published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, the Netherlands, under the general editorship of the President and the Secretary of ICMI.
The study Mathematics Education as a Research Domain: A Search for Identity. An ICMI Study, based mainly on the study conference What is Research in Mathematics Education, and What Are Its Results?, held at University of Maryland, College Park, USA, May 1994, appeared, in two volumes (576 pages), at the end of 1997. The study is edited by Anna Sierpinska and Jeremy Kilpatrick.
The manuscript for the study on Perspectives on the Teaching of Geometry for the 21st Century, the corresponding study conference of which was held at Università di Catania, Italy, September-October 1995, was sent to the publisher in the autumn of 1997. The study, edited by Vinicio Villani and Carmelo Mammana, will appear in the beginning of 1998.
The next study in the series is devoted to the theme The Role of the History of Mathe-matics in the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics. An International Programme Committee was appointed in 1996 (a list of members' names was published in the ICMI Bulletin, No. 41, December 1996, p. 14) with John Fauvel, the Open University, UK, and Jan van Maanen, the University of Groningen, the Netherlands as co-chairs. The Discussion Document for this study was published in various journals and newsletters, including the ICMI Bulletin, No. 42, June 1997, pp. 9-16, and in an abbreviated version in L'Enseignement mathématique, 2e Série, t. 43, fasc 1-2, janvier-juin 1997, pp. 199-203. The study conference will be held in France, at CIRM, Luminy (near Marseille), 20-25 April 1998, with Jean-Luc Dorier, Grenoble, France, in charge of the Local Organisation.
Moreover, the ICMI EC has mounted a study on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics at University Level. The IPC which was appointed in 1997 (a list of members' names is included in the ICMI Bulletin, No. 42, June 1997, p. 18) is chaired by Derek Holton, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. The Discussion Document for this study has been/will be published in numerous places, including the ICMI Bulletin, No. 43, December 1997, pp. 3-13, and L'Enseignement mathématique, 2e Série, t. 43, fasc. 3-4, juillet-décembre 1997, pp. 381-390. The corresponding study conference will take place in Singapore, 8-12 December 1998.
Plans for further studies, on average one per year, are under development.
4. Regional Conferences No ICMI Regional Conferences were held in 1997. The next such meeting, The First ICMI East Asia Regional Conference on Mathematics Education (ICMI-EARCOME 1), will be held in Chungbuk, The Republic of Korea, 17-21 August 1998.
5. Affiliated Study Groups ICMI continues to have four affiliated study groups, HPM (The International Study Group for the Relations Between the History and Pedagogy of Mathematics), IOWME (The International Organi-sation of Women and Mathematics Education), and PME (The International Group for the Psychology of Learning Mathematics), and WFNMC (The World Federation of National Mathematical Competitions).
6. The Solidarity Programme In 1992 ICMI established a Solidarity Programme to help the development of mathematics education in countries in which there is a need for it that justifies international assistance. The first stage in this programme was the mounting of a Solidarity Fund based on private contri-butions by in-dividu-als, associations, etc. The Fund is to be activated to support concrete initiatives and activities that may foster solidarity in mathematics education between well-defined quarters in develo-ped and less developed countries. The Solidarity Fund has received donations from various organisations and individuals in mathematics education for which it is most grateful. Thus, in 1997 the Fund received a donation of French Francs 5.000 from the French National Sub-Commission of ICMI, C.F.E.M. In 1997 no projects were supported by the Solidarity Fund. Although the total funds are not excessive, the ICMI EC would welcome applications concerning projects which are worthy of support in line with the general aims of the Fund.
7. ICMI WMY 2000 Committee In order to consider, plan and prepare the main aspects of ICMI's involvement in the World Mathematical Year 2000, an ad hoc committee, ICMI WMY 2000 Committee, has been formed, under the chairmanship of ICMI's President, Professor Miguel de Guzmán. The other members are listed in the ICMI Bulletin No. 42, June 1997, pp. 18-19.
8. ICMI Bulletins In 1997, ICMI Bulletin Nos. 42 and 43 were published under the editorship of the Secretary of ICMI. Furthermore, the ICMI Bulletin is available in the following electronic forms: In ASCII-format on direct request to the editor. On the World Wide Web, where it can be found under the following coordinates on the IMU-server, through URL:
http://elib.zib.de/imu.icmi.bull.[no.]
or
http://elib.zib.de/imu/icmi/bulletin/no
9. ICMI on WWW Since the end of 1995, information concerning ICMI can be found on the ICMI-pages of the IMU-server on the World Wide Web. The pages are located through URL:
http://elib.zib.de/imu.icmi
Amendment to the 1996 report
First of all, the 1996 report listed a donation of FF 19,700 (approx. $3,900) by the Societé Mathématique de France. It was later decided between IMU and SMF that this donation should be divided as follows : 40% for the CDE, 30% for ICMI and 30% for the Special Development Fund of IMU. I have accordingly re-imbursed IMU and the share of the CDE in the SMF donation has been $1,600 in 1997.
I have also recently made a $1,300 payment (travel grant to Professor Elizondo, see summary dated 96sep25). This fund was committed in 1996 and included in that year report.
The conference DEBC-97 (dynamical systems, scheduled to take place in Ukraine), was canceled. An amount of $3,000 committed in 1996 should now be added to the funds available.
As in the past years, the CDE received applications for travel support from individuals and applications for support to conferences organized in developing countries.
As a matter of fact, few applications for travel support met CDE standards or programmes so that only few individuals have actually been supported. Among the 6 beneficiaries, one has been supported within the CDE - ICTP agreement while two others were supported in the framework of the MUSA project (see below).
A total of nine conferences received CDE support. One of them was part of the CDE -- CIMPA agreement and another of the MUSA project (see below).
The CDE has been deeply involved in the MUSA project in the Southern Africa Region (a description of the project has been published in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society in May 1997). This project, introduced by the secretary of CDE some time ago, has been set up thanks to an extensive work by Professor Clemens on behalf of the CDE. A planning meeting was held in Botswana (late December 1997) and it is expected that the MUSA project will evolve very positively in a near future.
Although contacts have been made in Vietnam to develop a similar project, no effective responses can be reported yet.
Individual travel grants B. Oksendal (Norway --> Botswana) $ 1,500 E. Lungu (Botswana --> Norway)[committed] $ 1,500 H. Sissaoui (Algeria --> ICTP) $ 1,000 (CDE -- ICTP cooperation) V.R. Padmawar (India --> Australia) $ 1,000 R. Sahadevan (India --> Belgium) $ 1,000 H. lan (China --> Finland) $ 1,200 Support to conferences AMU Algebra conference (Burkina-Faso) $ 2,000 Geometry workshop (Lebanon) $ 2,000 Colloquium in Hanoi (Vietnam) $ 2,000 CIMPA workshop (Vietnam) $ 6,000 (CDE -- CIMPA cooperation) Algebra conference 1 (Morocco) $ 2,000 Algebra conference (Vietnam) $ 3,000 Algebra conference 2 (Morocco) $ 2,000 Mathematics in Finance (Botswana) $ 3,000 MUSA meeting (Botswana) $ 2,000
Past congresses to which the ICHM contributed:
XX International Congress of History of Science, Liege (Belgium), July 20-26, 1997
On behalf of the ICHM members of the Executive Committee (EC) or of the ICHM organized the following three symposia:
"Symposium in memory of A.P. Yushkevich" (K. Chemla, S. Demidov, E. Knobloch)
"Formation of a research area and a scientific community: applied mathematics" (J. Dauben, G. Israel)
"Ten classics of acient chinese mathematics" (J. Dauben, Liu Dun)
E. Knobloch, chairman of the ICHM, gave a plenary lecture on "Les ingenieurs de la Renaissance et leur manuscrits et traites illustres"
The ICHM reception at the "Musee d'histoire des techniques et de la metallurgie" for some 400 participants was sponsored by Academic Press.
On the occasion of the ICHM plenary meeting the 1997 K.O. May medal for outstanding contributions to the history of mathematics was awarded to Rene Taton, France. On the same occasion the election returns of the new EC of the ICHM were made known. The four main officers are:
| Chair: | Kirsti Andersen | (Denmark) |
| Vice-chair: | Craig Fraser | (Canada) |
| Secretary: | Jeanne Peiffer | (France) |
| Treasurer: | Menso Folkerts | (Germany) |
Their term of office lasts from January 1, 1998 until December 31, 2001.
"Constructions, reconstructions et images du corpus mathematique dans l'histoire. Dynamiques internes et causalite externes", September 22-26, 1997
Amy Dahan, France, and Umberto Bottazzini, Italy, organized this conference at the Centre International de Rencontres Mathematiques (CIRM) in Luminy (France).
K. Chemla, E. Knobloch, J. Peiffer, members of the EC or of the ICHM, were among the invited speakers.
"Language as an analogy in the natural sciences", November 21-23, 1997
Matthias Doerries, Germany, organized this conference at the Deutsches Museum in Munich (Germany).
K. Chemla, E. Knobloch, members of the EC or the ICHM were among the invited speakers.
Future Congresses
- International Congress of Mathematicians, August 18-28, 1998, Berlin
- Colloquy: "Berlin as a centre of mathematical activities" The colloquy is organized by G. Israel, Rome, and by E. Knobloch, Berlin, both being members of the Executive Committee of the ICHM. It will be a special activity of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Three historical lectures will be given by speakers who were invited by the program committee of the ICM: K. Chemla, France, J. Dauben, USA, J. Gray, United Kingdom. All three are members of the ICHM.
International Conference:
"Transmission and transformation of mathematical thought - a comparative approach", Wuhan (China), October 4-8, 1998. The conference is organized by the "Chinese Society of History of Mathematics". The head of the Organizing Committee is Li Wenlin, Beijing, Chinese member of the ICHM. J.W. Dauben and E. Knobloch, past chairmen of the ICHM, are vice chairmen of the conference. K. Andersen, chairperson of the ICHM, is a member of the Board of Directors. E. Knobloch is among the invited speakers.
Ongoing projects
Revised ICHM Bibliography - Albert Lewis, Canada, with the concurrence of the ICHM, serves as Chief Editor of the CD-ROM edition of J.W. Dauben's Selected Bibliography on History of Mathematics. The AMS will be the publisher. The contract was signed by the chairman of the ICHM.
ICHM Historiography project It is directed by J.W. Dauben and C.J. Scriba. The aim is to describe the historiography of mathematics from the first historical writings on mathematics by the ancient Greeks and Chinese to the present time.
IMU published one bulletin in 1997. The 10th World Directory of Mathematicians came out during the summer of 1994.
ICMI published 2 Bulletins, both supported by UNESCO grants. Other publications by ICMI were described above. ICHM also had several publications in 1997; they are described above in the topic of the ICHM activities.
Organizational Matters
The Executive Committee of IMU met once this year: on May 15-16, Berlin, site of the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians.
Vital Statistics
- members (countries) - 62 - 11 (IMU ) + 10 (CDE ) + 6 (ICHM) = 27 conferences supported - 1 (IMU) + 2 (ICMI) = 3 bulletins;
most conferences published their proceedings.