Read about the background and the jury

1. prize

Stéphane Durand
Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Qc, H3C 3J7, Canada.

Durand receives the first prize for a series of 7 posters, which deal with:

• Sunflower seeds and Fibonacci sequences
• Animals with a spotted body
• The Nautilus shell and the golden mean
• Viruses and knots
• Escher's Circle Limit III (hyperbolic plane) and the Big Bang
• Fractal geometry in many situations
• Snowflakes and chaos theory

2. prize

Andreas Frommer, Stefanie Krivsky and Petra Zöllner , Bergische Universität, Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, Fachbereich 7 (Mathematik), Gauss-Strasse 20, 42097 Wuppertal, Germany.

Frommer, Krivsky and Zöllner receive the second prize for a series of 5 posters divided into two concepts; 3 posters on mathematical thinking, which deal with:

• The bridges of Königsberg
• Primes and twin primes
• The Four Colour Theorem

2 posters on the advertising mathematics as being the foundation of high tech in everyday life, which deal with:

• Tomography: the brain
• Mathematical car crash test

3. prize

Nadja Kutz
Fachbereich Mathematik, Sekr. MA 8-5, Technische Universitat Berlin, Str. des 17. Juni 136, 10623 Berlin, Germany.

Kutz receives the third prize for the idea to a series of posters with various short slogans. She has submitted 3 posters with the slogans:

• Play with Mathematics
• Grow with Mathematics 
• The World is different with Mathematics

Background

The jury consisted of Bodil Branner from the Executive Committee, and Ronnie Brown, Mireille Chaleyat-Maurel and Vagn Lundsgaard Hansen (chair) from the EMS-committee on the WMY 2000.

It was a difficult task for the jury to come up with a decision. If a poster is to be both instantly attractive to a lay person, and at the same time signal an important mathematical message to a person reflecting on the poster, fruitful ideas are not particularly easy to come about. In several proposals, the graphics was attractive but the mathematical message too simple. In other proposals the depth in the mathematical content was high, but the graphics not sufficiently appealing to the general public. At the end, the jury selected three proposals which satisfied both expectations being attractive as well as carrying an important mathematical message. The recommendations by the jury were approved by the Executive Committee of the EMS at its meeting October 9-10 in Zürich. The Executive Committee expressed its satisfaction with the diversity in the submissions and by  the high degree of creativity shown by the proposers.