ICM98-CL28 (98/06/11): Electronic Publishing/Mathematical Software/Comparison of Mathematical Studies
E-mail information service of the
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MATHEMATICIANS
Berlin, Germany, August 18 - 27, 1998
28th Circular Letter
Subject: ICM98-CL28: Special Activities on
Electronic Publishing,
Mathematical Software, and
International Comparison of Mathematical Studies, ...
Dear colleague:
The "Section of Special Activities" at ICM'98 is almost complete,
and the corresponding lists of presentations and their schedules
are almost final.
Today I would like to report on three special activities:
- One aims at those interested in electronic publishing,
electronic communication etc.;
- one is of particular interest for those who use software
in mathematics; and
- one activity concerns the international comparison of
mathematical studies, university degrees and professional
perspectives.
1. ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING...
Many organizations and individuals suggested to schedule an activity
on electronic publication, information and communication. However, the
proposals were very diverse. It was hard to achieve agreement among
the people involved in planning this activity. I believe that this
difficulty is simply reflecting the current state of development.
Nobody is sure in which direction we are going and what measures are
to be taken. The views are controversial and political opinions
disagree considerably.
The final outcome of this discussion is an afternoon on electronic
publication (Monday, August 24) that starts out with a "technical
session" where reports are given on developments important for
mathematics:
MSC 2000, the new version of the Mathematics Subject
Classification
Metadata, a new tool for the description and location of
electronic documents (or document like objects)
MATHML, possibly the future "language" for storing mathematical
texts electronically.
The key activity of the afternoon will be a podium discussion, chaired
by IMU President David Mumford, involving 7 persons representing
different groups active in electronic publication. The topic of this
podium discussion is
"The Future of Electronic Communication, Information and Publishing".
This should be of interest to all those who worry about the
future of mathematical publishing and about the access to
mathematical publications.
Please find in the appendix below the details of this session
together with the abstracts of the presentations.
2. MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE
Three afternoons at ICM'98 are devoted to presentations of
mathematical software. Below is a program of these three afternoons
together with the list of presentations. Details about the program
can be found in the ICM'98-server, or directly under the URL:
http://elib.zib.de/ICM98/MathSoftware
3. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF STUDIES, DEGREES,...
International cooperation and collaboration is increasing.
However, the rules and regulations in many countries seem to
impede the international mobility of students, teachers,
and professionals. A discussion of this and related topics -
with respect to mathematics - will be the subject of a
roundtable organized by Ina Kersten (Bielefeld, Germany):
International Comparison
of Mathematical Studies, University Degrees
and Professional Perspectives
ROUND TABLE: August 25, 1998, 7.30 pm, H 104.
Among the panelists are K.-H. Hoffmann (President of the German
Mathematical Society, formerly the President of the "Wissenschaftsrat"
of Germany), A. Pelczar (President of the General Council for Higher
Education in Poland, Vice-President of the European Mathematical
Society), and M. Primicerio (Mayor of Florence, Italy).
There will be short reports on higher education policies and
professional perspectives in different countries. The discussion
also includes mobility of students and teaching staff, and the
development of cooperation networks. There are many professional
fields where mathematicians are needed as the discussion will show.
Sincerely
Martin Groetschel
President of the
ICM'98 Organizing Committee
=========================================================================
APPENDIX
=========================================================================
SESSION ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Monday, August 24, 1998:
Chairman: Peter Michor (Vienna, Austria)
14:00--14:30: "The year 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification, MSC2000"
Jane Kister, Mathematical Reviews, USA;
Bernd Wegner, Zentralblatt fuer Mathematik, Germany:
Since 1996, the editors of Mathematical Reviews (MR) and Zentralblatt
fuer Mathematik (ZBL) have been collaborating on a revision of the
1991 Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC). It is planned that the
revised classification, MSC2000, will be used by the two journals
starting in the year 2000. We will present the new classification,
in particular describing the principles underlying the revision and
the major changes in the MSC.
14:30--15:00: "Mathematical Metadata"
Judith Pluemer, University of Osnabrueck, Germany:
Publishing an article in a mathematical journal takes quite some
time. That is the reason why mathematicians make their scientific
work available on the internet in form of preprints. Resource
discovery of mathematical preprints should be faciliated. What
one wants is high quality retrieval for high quality material.
We show how the use of MetaData allows for a suitable search
engine. Creation of MetaData can be done by authors or providers
of preprint servers using freely available forminterfaces. In
short, we will demonstrate a prototype of MPRESS as the EMS will
name the service for retrieval of distributed mathematical
preprints in Europe, for further information, see
http://www.mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de/harvest/brokers/FraGer/
15:00--15:30: "An Introduction to MATHML"
Stephen Buswell, Stilo Technology, UK
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) has recently been
published as a Recommendation by the World Wide Consortium
(W3C). The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be
served, received and processed on the Web. This paper discusses
the issues involved with display and processing of mathematics
on the Web and outlines the XML-based solution developed.
This solution supports the encoding of both presentation
and semantic content of mathematical expressions. The
relationship between MathML and existing standards and
formats such as TeX is discussed. An overview of MathML-
compliant tools (existing and under development) for the
creation and processing will be given.
15:30--15:45: Discussion
15:45--16:15: Coffee Break
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
16:15--18:00 Panel Discussion
"The future of mathematical communication, information and publishing"
Chairman: David Mumford (Providence, IMU president)
Panelists (in alphabetic order):
Neil Calkin (Clemson, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics):
Electronic journals
John Ewing (Providence, American Mathematical Society):
Views of learned societies
Martin Groetschel (Berlin, German Mathematical Society):
Information and communication networks
Joachim Heinze (Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag):
Views of a scientific commercial publisher
Carol Hutchins (New York, Courant Institute Library):
The situation of libraries
Peter Michor (Vienna, European Mathematical Society):
Electronic libraries
Richard Palais (Brandeis, Waltham, MA, USA):
Electronic e-print servers
Each panelist will be given 5 to 10 minutes time to report his/her
vision of the future. This will be followed by a broad discussion,
including the audience.
=========================================================================
SESSION ON MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE
A call for participation in a Session on Mathematical Software has been
announced in the Circular Letter ICM98-CL17. This session will be held
at TU Berlin on August 19, 20, and 21, from 2 pm to 6 pm. The focus of
this session is the presentation of a wide spectrum of mathematical
software systems to a broad audience: ICM attendees, students, teachers,
etc., with a special interest in mathematical software.
The presentations have been selected by a special program committee,
chaired by Johannes Grabmeier, IBM Germany (speaker of the special
interest group for computer algebra of DMV, GAMM, and GI):
* Johannes Grabmeier, Germany (chair)
* Markus Hitz, USA
* Heinz Kredel, Germany
* Winfried Neun, Germany
* Stephen Watt, Canada
* Michael Wester, USA
* Christoph Zenger, Germany
The committee regrets that it had to reject excellent submissions
despite the fact that IMU and the local Organizing Committee agreed
to extend the time slot for this session from two to three afternoons.
The (probably final) schedule for this session is as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, August 19, 1998
2:00 pm to 3:45 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
MAGMA V2.3 Cannon, U Sydney
Singular Greuel, Pfister et.al,U Kaiserslautern
CoCoA Robbiano, U Genova
4:15 pm to 6:00 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
Solving Problems with Trott, Wolfram Res.
Mathematica
Learning Linear Algebra Deeba, U Houston-Downtown
Using an Interactive Text
REDLOG Dolzmann, Sturm, U Passau
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, August 20, 1998
2:00 pm to 3:45 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
Polymake Joswig, Gawrilow,TU Berlin
CREP Draexler et.al., U Bielefeld
Macaulay 2 Grayson & Stillman
4:15 pm to 6:00 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
GAP Linton et.al, Aachen, St. Andrews
MuPAD Fuchssteiner et al, U Paderborn
FRISCO Traverso et.al,(EU Project), U Pisa
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, August 21, 1998
2:00 pm to 3:45 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
VBM Maddocks, Paffenroth, EPF Lausanne
SIMATH Zimmer et al, U Saarbruecken
PARI / GP Belabas, PARI group, U Bordeaux
4:15 pm to 6:00 pm
SOFTWARE NAME SUBMITTER, AFFILIATION
UG Wieners et.al, U Stuttgart
ODELab Nowak, et.al. ZIB Berlin
AMPL Gay, Fourer, AMPL
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Responsible for the local organization of the Session on Mathematical
Software: Winfried Neun
Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik
Berlin, Germany
Email: neun@zib.de
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