| International
Conference on DYNAMICAL METHODS
FOR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS in
honor of Professor George R. Sell’s
65th birthday, September 4 - 7,
2002 We would like to thank Professor Russell Johnson, of the University of Firenze, for the following remarks about this conference and Professor Sell’s work. Professor Johnson received his Ph.D. from our department in 1975. This international meeting was held in Medina del Campo (Spain). George has made numerous mathematical contributions which lie at the interface between dynamical systems and differential equations. In particular, he has authored fundamental papers in the field of non-autonomous dynamical systems, an area which was well-represented at the meeting. So it seems particularly appropriate that the conference  carried
his name. A scientific committee
was responsible for selecting
the speakers and fixing the sections
of the meeting. Its members were
A. Delshams (Barcelona), R. Johnson
(Firenze), R. Obaya (Valladolid),
and R. Ortega (Granada). There
were around 100 participants from
24 countries. Numerous themes
of ordinary, partial, and functional
differential equations and their
applications were discussed during
the main talks and sessions. The
organization of the meeting was
carried out by A. Alonso, S. Novo,
C. Nunez, R. Obaya, and J. Rojo
of the Universidad de Valladolid.
The invited speakers were as follows:
Viviane Baladi (CNRS - IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette),
Fritz Colonius (Universitat Augsburg),
Lorenzo Diaz (PUC, Rio de Janeiro),
Paul Glendinning (University of
Manchester), Angel Jorba (Universidad
de Barcelona), Gerhard Keller
(Universitat Erlangen), Urs Kirchgraber
(ETH Zurich), Peter E. Kloeden
(J.W. Goethe Univ., Frankfurt),
Raphael Krikorian (Ecole Polytechnique,
Paris), Yuri Latushkin (University
of Missouri-Columbia), Rafael
De la Llave (University of Texas
at Austin), Roberto Markarian
(IMERL, Montevideo), Welington
de Melo (IMPA, Rio de Janeiro),
J. Angel Rodriguez (Universidad
de Oviedo), Wolfgang Ruess (Universitat
Essen), George R. Sell (University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis), and
Yingfei Yi (Georgia Institute
of Technology, Atlanta)The Conference on Foundations of Computational Mathematics The Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and the School of Mathematics hosted this major international meeting on August 5-14, 2002. There were 18 three-day workshops and 18 plenary speakers, covering fields of research at the interface of Numerical Analysis, Computer Science and Mathematics. The last such meeting was FoCM’99 (July 1999) in Oxford, England. Details of the program and copies of many of the presentations can be found on the conference web site http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/na/FoCM/FoCM02/. The conference was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, IBM, the American Institute of Mathematics, the Number Theory Society and the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota. One of the highlights of the meeting was the “Panel Discussion on the Future of the Foundations of Computational Mathematics,” aimed at forecasting the mathematics of the future, and discussing outstanding problems on which young researchers should focus. Endre Suli (Oxford) moderated the session. Panelists were Lenore Blum (Carnegie Mellon), Ron DeVore (South Carolina), Peter Olver, and Steve Smale (Berkeley). Smale discussed relevant outstanding problems from his famous list of 18 + 3. (A solution of one of the problems was announced at the meeting.) For copies of the presentations see http://www.ima.umn.edu/~miller/FoCM_panel.html Planning for the meeting took two years. Willard Miller and Peter Olver co-chaired the Local Organizing Committee for FoCM’02; the other committee members were Carme Calderer, Bernardo Cockburn, Victor Reiner, and Jianhong Shen. Among other local participants, Andrew Odlyzko was a plenary speaker and Dennis Hejhal, Mitch Luskin, Peter Olver, Guillermo Sapiro and George Sell were workshop organizers. Graduate students Burhan Biner, Jeongoo Cheh, Hongjie Dong, Hazem Hamden, Anton Leykin, and Ji Hoon Ryoo participated in the meeting and helped at the registration desk. A major new project of the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (SFoCM) is the Journal in Foundations of Computational Mathematics, published by Springer-Verlag on behalf of SFoCM. The first issue appeared in January 2001. The journal contains research and survey papers of the highest quality that further the understanding of the connections between mathematics and computation, including the interfaces between pure and applied mathematics, numerical analysis and computer science. At FoCM’02 Peter Olver and Arieh Iserles (Cambridge, England) became Managing Editors of the Journal. The Journal operations are managed through the Minnesota website, see http://www.math.umn.edu/~focm/ As a lead-in to FoCM’02, the IMA 2002 Summer Program, Special Functions in the Digital Age, was held July 22 - August 2, 2002. Willard Miller and Peter Olver were also the principle local organizers for this event. (Another member of the Organizing Committee was Frank Olver, Peter’s father!) See http://www.ima.umn.edu/digital-age/ for details. The theme of the IMA summer program was carried over to FoCM’02 with a plenary talk and FoCM workshop on special functions, 5-7 August. Willard Miller and Peter Olver |