ICM 2018, in Rio de Janeiro, will bring together the world's best mathematicians for various activities, including Plenary Lectures, Invited Lectures and the Award Ceremony for the Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize, the Gauss Prize, the Chern Medal, and the Leelavati Prize. As the first edition of the ICM in Latin America, as well as in the Southern Hemisphere, the ICM in Rio de Janeiro will give us an opportunity to reflect on the great progress of the region in terms of research and public awareness of mathematics.

Find out more: ICM 2018 Official Website

James Simons is chairman of the Simons Foundation and board chair and founder of Renaissance Technologies. Prior to his financial career, Simons was chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University, taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, and was a cryptanalyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Simons holds a B.S. from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, he won the Veblen Prize of the American Mathematics Society for his work in geometry. He is a trustee of the Stony Brook Foundation, Rockefeller University, MIT, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, New York Genome Center and the Institute for Advanced Study, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

You can watch his public lecture given on the opening day of the ICM 2014 here.

A new plaque to commemorate the celebrated Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (August 5th 1802 - April 6th 1829) was inaugurated on the April 6th in Berlin, Germany. The Norwegian ambassador Sven E. Svedman and the Secretary of the International Mathematical Union, Professor Martin Grötschel, jointly unveiled the plaque.

The plaque is now located on the facade of his former Berlin apartment building on the street "Am Kupfergraben" number 4a, which is situated opposite the Pergamon Museum. The house was destroyed in World War II but after 1989 a new building was constructed on the property where the plaque is now mounted. The plaque was designed by the artist Erika Klagge and funded by the Berlin company "Gießerei Noack".

Abel lived in 1825 and 1826 in the centre of Berlin. During this time he was supported by the mathematician, engineer and publisher August Leopold Crelle, who published Abels work in his "Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics". Thanks to the support of Crelle, Abel received his first international scientific recognition. His most famous single result is the first complete proof demonstrating the impossibility of solving the general quintic equation in radicals. This question was one of the outstanding open problems of his day, and had been unresolved for 250 years. He was also an innovator in the field of elliptic functions and discoverer of Abelian functions. When he died, only 26 years old, he left a large body of work, including the first proof of the general binomial theorem, which had been stated by Newton and Euler.

In his memory, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences awards the Abel Prize (founded in 2003), which is, next to the Field Medal, the highest scientific award in mathematics. In 2014 the Abel Prize was awarded to the Russian mathematician Yakov G. Sinai.

The plaque was an initiative of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in cooperation with the Norwegian Academy of Sciences.

Since its establishment in 2005, the African Mathematics Millennium Science Initiative (AMMSI) which is supported by the CDC has concentrated on promoting mathematics in Sub-Sahara African countries because, at the time of its establishment, it was anticipated that a Millennium Science project would be initiated for the Mediterranean countries, to involve Southern Europe and North Africa.  The project never materialized.  Over the years, there has been concern about exclusion of North Africa from AMMSI’s activities, particularly since some of the countries in this region are equally in need of the kind of support provided by AMMSI.

Consequently, the AMMSI Programme Committee recently resolved to establish an AMMSI North Africa Region consisting of the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia.  The country of South Sudan now becomes part  AMMSI Eastern Africa, due to the close economic and political ties it has with Eastern Africa.  The Programme Committee also approved the appointment of Prof. Nouzha El Yacoubi, of University Mohammed V – Agdal, Morocco, as the first AMMSI Regional Coordinator for North Africa.
 
More information can be found here.

More information can be found here

More information can be found here.

IMU-Simons Travel Fellowship Program established to provide 75,000 USD for a three-year period for collaborative research visits of mathematicians working in the developing world to a "center of excellence" in any part of the world for collaborative research.

The Simons Foundation has made a grant to the Commission for Developing Countries (CDC) of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) to support mathematicians working in a developing or economically disadvantaged country (as determined by the IMU CDC).

These grants underwrite a mathematician's travel to a center of excellence in any part of the world for collaborative research. In exceptional cases, the funds may also be used by mathematicians from developed countries to visit research centers in developing countries, to collaborate with the mathematicians working there.

Mathematicians with a doctoral degree and employed as a faculty member of a university or equivalent institution may apply for up to 5,000 USD under this program. These grants completely cover travel costs from the applicant's place of work to the host's place of work, including economy class airfare, surface (public) transport and all visa fees as well as travel and health insurance charges.

An applicant should already have established contact with a mathematician at the host institution and should have a definite research plan which must be submitted, along with the curriculum vitae of both mathematicians, with the application. Furthermore, an applicant must have been granted an appropriate leave of absence from his/her home institution covering the period of the visit.

In addition, the application must contain a formal letter of invitation from the host institution which clearly specifies the period of the visit, as well as the extent of its financial commitment. In particular, it is expected that the host institution (at least) completely covers all local living expenses, such as accommodation and boarding.

The duration of the visit should be of a reasonable length of time to allow fruitful interaction. The minimal length of a visit that would be considered is one month.

More information can be found under grants soon.

For questions please contact: Lena Koch, IMU Secretariat, cdc.administrator@mathunion.org

Applications are invited of a 5-day workshop that is organized as a satellite activity of the 2013 Mathematical Congress of the Americas at CIMAT in Guanajuato (Mexico) during July 29 -- August 2 2013.

The workshop will bring together about 40 young researchers, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean and a dozen distinguished scientists, each of which will give several lectures on a chosen topic. The workshop is part of the world initiative "Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013" which is endorsed by IMU.

It is jointly organized by IMU together with the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) and the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM). It is sponsored by the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), and supported by ICSU Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, by two interdisciplinary bodies of ICSU, namely IRDR (Integrated Research on Disaster Risk) and WCRP, by the US National Academy of Sciences, by the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, and by CIMAT (Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas) in Mexico.

he Ramanujan Prize for young mathematicians from developing countries has been awarded annually since the first winner was announced in 2005.

The 2013 Prize will be funded and administered jointly by ICTP and IMU.

The Prize winner must be less than 45 years of age on 31 December of the year of the award, and have conducted outstanding research in a developing country. Researchers working in any branch of the mathematical sciences are eligible. The Prize carries a $15,000 cash award.

The winner will be invited to the ICTP to receive the Prize and deliver a lecture. The Prize is usually awarded to one person, but may be shared equally among recipients who have contributed to the same body of work.

The Selection Committee will take into account not only the scientific quality of the research, but also the background of the candidate and the environment in which the work was carried out. The Committee consists of eminent mathematicians appointed in consultation between the ICTP and the IMU.

The deadline for receipt of nominations for the 2013 Prize is 1 February 2013.

Please send nominations to math@ictp.it describing the work of the nominee in adequate detail. Nominations should include a CV and a list of publications, as well as a letter of recommendation. Additional supporting letters are encouraged.

Self-nominations are strongly discouraged.

Call for Nominations: 2013 Ramanujan Prize (PDF)