Parker Ladwig
ladwig.1@nd.edu

Here's all the news through early February. Thanks to all of you for allowing me to moderate last year's roundtable and to keep you up-to-date with news of mathematics. Fred Yuengling will begin writing the column in May.

General News
April 2003 will be Math Awareness Month, and the theme this year is "Mathematics & Art." "[H]eld in April each year, … [the] goal is to increase public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics. It began in 1986 with a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan, who said in part:

‘Despite the increasing importance of mathematics to the progress of our economy and society, enrollment in mathematics programs has been declining at all levels of the American educational system. Yet the application of mathematics is indispensable in such diverse fields as medicine, computer sciences, space exploration, the skilled trades, business, defense, and government. To help encourage the study and utilization of mathematics, it is appropriate that all Americans be reminded of the importance of this basic branch of science to our daily lives’" (http://mathforum.org/mam/03/about.mam.html)

For more information, and some art, please see http://www.mathforum.org/mam/.

The AMS reported in January that:
"The 2003 Wolf Prize in Mathematics will be jointly awarded to Mikio Sato, Kyoto University, Japan, and John T. Tate, University of Texas, Austin. Sato is cited for 'his vision of algebraic analysis and mathematical physics, which initiated several fundamental branches of mathematics.' Tate is recognized for 'his fundamental concepts in algebraic number theory. For over a quarter of a century, his ideas have dominated the development of arithmetic algebraic geometry.' The awards will be presented in May by Mr. Mosche Katsav, President of the State of Israel, at a special ceremony at the Knesset on May 11, 2003. The Wolf Foundation was established by the late German-born inventor, diplomat and philanthropist Dr. Ricardo Wolf, "to promote science and art for the benefit of mankind." (http://www.ams.org/dynamic_archive/home-news.html#wolf)

Speaking of prizes, I forgot to report earlier about the 2002 Fields Medal and Nevanlinna Prize winners. The 2002 Fields Medalists were Laurent Lafforgue "for making major advancements in the 'Langlands Program,'" and Vladimir Voevodsky "for developing a new cohomology theory for algebraic varieties." The Nevanlinna Prize winner was Madhu Sudan "in recognition for his work on 'probabilistically checkable proofs, to non-approximability of optimization problems, and to error-correcting codes.'" The best announcement may be found at http://www.maa.org/news/fields02.html.

Publishers and publishing
Documenta Mathematica, a SPARC partner, contributed e-publishing savings to a new prize for mathematicians. The new prize is the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize which includes a medal and EUR 10,000. The first award will be given at the International Congress of Mathematications in 2006. "The Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV) awarded Documenta Mathematica the contract to produce the ICM '98 Proceedings … with a grant of EUR 25,000 to cover production costs…. The electronic version of the proceedings was produced for only EUR 1,250. [DM] transferred back to the DMV the savings plus EUR 6,500 earned in sales of the edition, for a total contribution of EUR 30,250." This contribution was used to establish the Gauss Prize. See http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0211&L=pamnet#23 for more details.

On December 19, Ann Jensen told PAMnet that she is involved with a project called the Mathematics Surveys Proposal, http://www.mathsurvey.org. Led by Jim Pitman of UCLA, the proposal is "to construct a new means of organizing, communicating, and archiving mathematical knowledge by a faithful representation of that knowledge in cyberspace." Ann said that Carol Hutchins had also been contacted, and Ann promised to share more as things develop. For additional details see: http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0212&L=pamnet&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1#23.

On January 9, the AMS was kind enough to share with PAMnet its plans for dealing with the RoweCom situation, http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0301&L=pamnet&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1#58.

Carol Hutchins reported to PAMnet that "as of the end of December, 2003, the London Mathematical Society will be the publisher of Compositio Mathematica, on behalf of its owners, Foundation Compositio Mathematica. Subscriptions will be managed by Cambridge University Press. The foundation acquired the backfiles from Kluwer, and the foundation's Web site is http://www.compositio.nl."

George Porter reported to PAMnet that the Indian Academy of Sciences is providing electronic access to its eleven journals, most with free fulltext. The one of most direct interest to mathematics is Proceedings--Mathematical Sciences (fulltext v. 110+, 2000+), http://www.ias.ac.in/mathsci/.

On January 30, Carol Hutchins reported information on the European Mathematical Society, http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0301&L=pamnet#56. In addition to the information she provided (which is excerpted below), Carol suggested we scan the the EMS Publishing House's Web site at http://www.ems-ph.org.

"About a year ago, the European Mathematical Society founded a new publishing house for mathematics. The aims of the enterprise are to publish first quality books and journals from all fields of mathematics at reasonable prices and with the best possible service to authors and readers. We plan to achieve global distribution through collaboration with other society or independent publishers. (In a handshake agreement, the AMS has already agreed to distribute our products in the Americas.) Although we will operate on an independent, commercial basis, our publishing house will have a non-profit structure, and the entire income generated from our future publications will be used to cover current expenses and perhaps, if the situations allows, support the dissemination of mathematical knowledge in a broader sense."

And last, there was another interesting exchange involving Hindawi Press, http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind0302&L=pamnet&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1#6. Apparently, it plans to raise the cost of International Mathematics Research Notes from $1,300 in 2003 to $2,395 in 2004. Ahmed Hindawi explained the policy, but I think that despite Hindawi's best intentions, libraries will find it difficult to continue to support IMRN.

SLA Mathematics Roundtable
Fred Yuengling sent PAMnet the following note about the upcoming Mathematics Roundtable:

"I'm moderating the Mathematics Roundtable this summer in New York, and I'd love to receive your suggestions for discussion topics or presentations. I'd also appreciate any advice/suggestions from any former Math Roundtable moderators.

If you are doing or have recently done research or projects relating to mathematics literature, libraries, electronic resources, relevant areas of mathematics, etc. and feel that the Math Roundtable would be an appropriate venue to discuss your work, I'd also like to hear from you.

Please email me with your suggestions at: feyuengl@ucsc.edu."