NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS (NZIMA) Newsletter 29 November 2010 We're very pleased to bring you another update on news from the mathematical sciences CoRE, the NZIMA. The 9th issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been produced and distributed. We hope you like it. If you didn't get a copy and would like one, please let us know! Marston Conder and Vaughan Jones Co-Directors of the NZIMA SUMMARY OF CONTENTS 1. Inaugural Jones Medal awarded to John Butcher FRSNZ 2. More awards and honours 3. The next Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress, Shanghai, June 2013 4. Ninth issue of NZ-IMAges 5. Profile: John Butcher 6. Update on Mathematics Education programme 7. NZIMA support for visitors and NZ conferences 8. Reports on recent conferences supported or sponsored by the NZIMA 9. Upcoming events in the mathematical sciences 1. INAUGURAL JONES MEDAL AWARDED TO JOHN BUTCHER The (Vaughan) Jones Medal for lifetime achievement in the mathematical sciences was established recently by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and was awarded for the first time at the New Zealand Research Honours Dinner, in Christchurch, on 10th November 2010. The inaugural winner of the Jones Medal is Emeritus Professor John Butcher FRSNZ, of the University of Auckland. John was one of the founding PIs of the NZIMA, and the director of one of our first thematic programmes, on "Numerical Methods for Evolutionary Problems". The award recognises John's exceptional work on numerical methods for the solution of ordinary differential equations, and his leadership in the development of the mathematical sciences in New Zealand. The medal was presented to John by Vaughan Jones personally, together with a prize of $5000 donated by the NZMRI (Inc). See item 5 below for a "profile" item on John Butcher and his work. For further information, see also http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/2010/11/10/new-medal-for-mathematics-achievement/ (which includes information on the design of the medal), and http://www.science.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/news/template/news_item.jsp?cid=335090 2. MORE AWARDS AND HONOURS * John Butcher has also been awarded the Van Wijngaarden Prize for 2011. This prize is awarded every five years by the CWI (the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) in Amsterdam, to two eminent scientists in the fields of mathematics and computer science. See also item 5 below. * Estate Khmaladze (VU Wellington) and Andre Nies (U Auckland) have been elected Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand. * In addition to the invited lectures by Gaven Martin and Andre Nies at the International Congress of Mathematicians in August (ICM2010), a public lecture was given at the Congress by Bill Barton (who is director of our NZIMA programme in mathematics education), as President of ICMI (the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction). Bill Barton's lecture, on "Where is mathematics taking us?", attracted an audience of hundreds of students and teachers, and is highlighted on the cover of the November 2010 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and described in an article on pages 1276 and 1277 of that issue. A 1.6Mb pdf copy of the article can be downloaded from the website http://www.ams.org/notices/201010/index.html (by clicking on "The Public Lectures in Hyderabad"). Bill also gave a follow-up lecture to educators on "Why are mathematics lecturers like Sachin Tendulkar?" - about developing a culture of continual professional development. 3. THE NEXT PACIFIC RIM MATHEMATICAL CONGRESS The Pacific Rim Mathematical Association (PRIMA) has decided on the date and venue for the second Pacific Rim Mathematical Congress. This will be held at Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, the week 24-28 June 2013. See http://www.pims.math.ca/scientific-event/130624-spc for further details as they become available. If you have any suggestions for the plenary speakers, please advise Marston Conder (who is on the Steering Committee for PRIMA). 4. NINTH ISSUE OF NZ-IMAGES GLOSSY BULLETIN The latest issue of our colourful twice-yearly bulletin "NZ-IMAges" has just been published. This one, the ninth issue, features several items on teaching and research and other opportunities in statistics, written to coincide with the celebration of World Statistics Day on 20th October. It also includes articles on patterns in prime numbers, modelling wind power, and this year's highly successful New Zealand team at the International Mathematical Olympiad. A notable quote (from Chris Wild) is that "Looking at the world using data is like looking through a rippled glass window. What we see is not quite the way it really is. Statistical inference is about how to take that into account." See also http://www.nzima.org/Publications.html for previous issues. 5. PROFILE: JOHN BUTCHER John Butcher began his academic career in 1952 studying at Auckland University College (of the University of New Zealand), where he gained a Masters degree with first class honours in mathematics. He took his PhD in physics at the University of Sydney from 1956 to 1960, and after periods at the University of Canterbury and Stanford, he returned to Auckland as a Professor of Mathematics in 1966, where he has worked for the last 44 years. John's primary areas of research interest are numerical analysis and the mathematics of computation, and he is without doubt one of the world's leading experts on numerical methods for the solution of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). These are involved in a huge variety of applications, and incorporated into software packages used by engineers and applied mathematicians worldwide to obtain efficient and accurate solutions all kinds of practical problems. His research has also led to significant advances in related fields. For example, he found a key to understanding the accuracy of numerical methods, using concepts in graph theory and combinatorics, that led him to develop an algebraic structure now known as the Butcher group. Some 26 years later this structure was rediscovered by Dirk Kreimer and (Fields Medalist) Alain Connes in the guise of the Hopf algebra of rooted trees, and has important applications in geometry and theoretical physics, especially Quantum Field Theory. According to Connes and Kreimer, John Butcher's work was an impressive example of how "concrete problem-oriented work can lead to far-reaching conceptual results". John has published well over 150 scientific papers, including many seminal works, and three excellent books. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1980, won the NZ Mathematical Society's annual Research Award when it was offered for the first time in 1991, awarded the Hector Medal of the RSNZ in 1996, and won the ICCMSE Prize for Computational Mathematics in 2003. In 2010 John was elected a Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (the first ever New Zealander to win this honour), won the Van Wijngaarden Prize for 2011, and won the inaugural Jones Medal of the RSNZ - see above. But not only has he been a towering presence on the world stage, he has also played a hugely important role in New Zealand mathematics. At the University of Auckland he was Head of the Mathematics Department from 1967 to 1973, and then founding Head of the Computer Science Department from 1980 to 1985. He was a founding member of the NZ Mathematical Society, and its second president, and was the first editor of the Mathematical Chronicle, the journal which later became the NZ Journal of Mathematics. He has also been a champion for his field through the organisation of international conferences and workshops in NZ. John has continued to perform at the top of the field even after his official retirement in 1998. In the last five years or so he has given invited lectures in Mexico, Malaysia, Poland, Japan, South Africa, Norway, the USA, Greece, Germany, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan and China. He continues to write and publish papers on his work, serves on the editorial boards of four major international journals, and supervises graduate students. And at the age of 77, he still loves solving difficult mathematical problems. 6. UPDATE ON MATHEMATICS EDUCATION PROGRAMME This is a brief update on the NZIMA's thematic programme on "Senior Secondary and Undergraduate Mathematical Science in New Zealand", directed by Bill Barton (Auckland) and Megan Clark (Wellington). A national joint conference (with teachers) was held in April 2010. This conference brought teachers and lecturers together for the first time to share visions, brain-storm ideas, and envisage a new framework for the school-university interface. Lectures were given by Merrilyn Goos (Director of the Teaching and Educational Development Institute at the University of Queensland) and Bernard Hodgson (Secretary-General of ICMI). The conference included breakout sessions where the participants could discuss at length ideas around a specific topic. As a continuation of the conference, there are several regional meetings being organised to develop the community of teachers and lecturers in the mathematical sciences. They are also an opportunity to discuss a Vision Document developed from the conference discussions. Also the collection of data resulting for the NZIMA programme is being incorporated into the IMU/ICMI Pipeline Project, and reported in a special panel session at the International Congress of Mathematicians in August. For more details, see http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/CULMS/envisioning-the-future-senior-secondary-and-undergraduate-mathematical-sciences/. 7. NZIMA SUPPORT FOR VISITORS AND LOCAL CONFERENCES The NZIMA undertakes and supports a wide range of activities in New Zealand that promote excellence in the mathematical sciences. As part of this, from time to time we call for suggestions for conferences and high-profile visitors and other valuable research (or research-related) activities. We are again making such a call, with a deadline of 31st January 2011. For details, see the NZIMA website http://www.nzima.org and click the "Support Opportunities" link in the left hand menu bar. 8. REPORTS ON RECENT CONFERENCES SUPPORTED OR SPONSORED BY THE NZIMA * Permutation Patterns The NZIMA sponsored a conference on Permutation Patterns at the University of Otago in June 2008. This was the 6th in a series of international meetings on a topic which brings together ideas dating back over 100 years on properties of permutations with more recent ideas in mathematics and computer science related to sorting algorithms and abstract machines. The series was initiated by the "Theory of Computing" Research Group at Otago, which is now the pre-eminent world centre for research in permutation patterns, and involves (among others) Mike Atkinson, who is co-director of our NZIMA programme on Algorithms. This conference series has just celebrated its 8th annual meeting, at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA. for more details of the series, see http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~pp2010/History.html * Women in Statistics A one-day conference on Women in Statistics was held at Victoria University of Wellington on 20th October (World Statistics Day). Organised by Sharleen Forbes (Statistics New Zealand and VU Wellington), the meeting attracted over 50 people from a range of backgrounds. The Hon. Pansy Wong, Minister of Women's Affairs, opened the conference and enthusiastically promoted the importance of statistics across a wide range of activities, including many of direct relevance to women. The main speakers and the presentations they gave were as follows: * Natalie Jackson, "Educating Rita and Other Efficiency Gains" * Lisa Davies, "Using statistics to inform Maori development policy" * Sharleen Forbes, "Old Data: new ways of seeing it" * Megan Clark, "Less is More" * Jennifer Brown, "Going Green: How statistics helps manage New Zealand's environment" * Rachael Milicich, "Statistics and Me". For more details, see http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sog/about/news.aspx * Computational homology and dynamics A workshop on this topic was held at the University of Canterbury in August, organised by Ben Martin, Rua Murray and Mike Plank, and led by Erskine visitor Konstantin Mischaikow (Rutgers University, NJ). The workshop featured a series of one-hour lectures by seven international experts, aimed at postgraduate and senior undergraduate students, and covering topological methods for analysing data sets that arise from dynamical systems, and their applications to gene regulation, neural networks, image processing, and fluid flow. Sponsorship by the NZIMA was particularly helpful in supporting the participation of students. 9. UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES 29-30 November 2010, at the University of Auckland: Annual Conference of the Operations Research Society of NZ See https://secure.orsnz.org.nz/conf45/ 7-9 December 2010, at the University of Otago, Dunedin: Annual NZ Mathematical Society Colloquium See http://nzmathsoc.org.nz/colloquium/home.php 9-14 January 2011, at Raglan: Annual NZMRI/NZIMA Summer Meeting, with theme "Dynamical systems" See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/NZMRI2011/ 30 January - 3 February 2011, at Glenelg, South Australia ANZIAM 2011 (Annual Australian and NZ Industrial & Applied Mathematics conference) See http://anziam2011.adelaide.edu.au 6-11 February 2011, at Leigh (near Warkworth): The Annual NZ Phylogenetics Meeting See http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/events/leigh2011 6-11 February 2011, at Melbourne: 2011 MISG (Mathematics and Statistics in Industry Study Group) Workshop See http://www.rmit.edu.au/maths/misg 23-24 February 2011, at Auckland: Statistical Issues in Drug Development See http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/sidd2011/ 3-7 July 2011, at Alice Springs, Australia: 34th Annual Conference of MERGA (Mathematics Education Research Group Australasia) See http://www.aamt.edu.au/index.php/Conferences/AAMT-MERGA-conference 28-31 August 2011, at the University of Auckland: Annual Conference of the NZ Statistical Association See http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/nzsa2011/ [soon] 27 November - 2 December 2011, at Rotorua: Volcanic DELTA: The 8th Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics See http://www.delta2011.co.nz/delta2011 15-20 December 2011, at Victoria University of Wellington: The 12th Asian Logic Conference See http://msor.victoria.ac.nz/Events/ALC2011/WebHome SUBSCRIBING AND UNSUBSCRIBING Please forward this NZIMA newsletter to any non-subscriber to whom the material may be relevant and who may wish to receive the publication regularly. 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