The election of the new ICMI Executive Committee 1999-2002 marks a substantial change in the membership of the EC. New Officers were appointed to succeed Miguel de Guzmán as President, Jeremy Kilpatrick and Anna Sierpinska as Vice-Presidents and Mogens Niss as Secretary. New members were elected in succession to Colette Laborde, Carlos E. Vasco and Zhang Dianzhou, while ex-officio member David Mumford ended his term as President of IMU (the only fixed points between the previous EC and the new one being Member Gilah Leder and Ex-officio Member Jacob Palis Jr.).
As the new Secretary of ICMI, I would like to add my voice to that of President Hyman Bass, in his welcoming message above, by thanking all the outgoing members of the Executive Committee 1995-1998 for the work they have done on the EC and for the level of activities that was maintained within ICMI during the last quadrennium. In particular, my personal thanks are addressed to my predecessor Mogens Niss, who has served for twelve consecutive years on the ICMI Executive Committee, the last two terms in the quality of Secretary. The task of succeeding Mogens Niss is certainly a bit frightening, considering the enthusiasm, the working capacity and the remarkable efficiency in handling ICMI’s affairs on a day-to-day basis which he has constantly showed during his terms, as well as more generally the numerous achievements accomplished by ICMI during the last years, to a substantial extent under his direct influence. When it became known that I would succeed him, Mogens was very generous of his time, knowledge and experience to help me prepare for the transition. I can only hope that some of the many lessons that were to be learned from him will materialize in the present term as well.
One implication of the change of Officers is that the Secretariat of ICMI will now been hosted at Université Laval, Québec, Canada (see address of the Secretary on page 1 of this Bulletin). Moreover from this issue onwards the ICMI Bulletin will be edited by the new Secretary and distributed by the new Secretariat (hence the change to a "North American" format of paper). I will endeavor to maintain the high standards set by my predecessor and have this publication a valuable source of information and a forum of exchange of views significant to the international mathematics education community. I should however warn the reader of an essential difficulty: this editor’s mother tongue is French. Consequently, the language of the articles written or edited by the editor will inevitably be strewn with non-idiomatic - if not incorrect - English expressions. To make the production of this Bulletin sufficiently flexible and inexpensive it will not be possible, in general, to have the language of the articles corrected by someone whose mother tongue is English. And while a word processor is extremely useful in this respect, it is well known that this is not a universal solution. We thus hope to be granted indulgence by those whose mother tongue is English and sympathy by those who share with us the disadvantage of having a different first language.
In the future as in the past, there is no copyright on material published in the Bulletin, except explicitly stated otherwise. On the contrary, ICMI National Representatives, officers of mathematics education associations, editors of journals, etc., are encouraged to reproduce articles as well as news, announcements and other sorts of information as they feel appropriate.
As it is not possible for ICMI Secretariat to circulate the Bulletin to all individuals that might have some interest in it, the traditional channel of distribution of the information appearing in the Bulletin is through the ICMI National Representatives (whose names and addresses can be found at the end of this issue). The mailing list of the Bulletin also comprises some individuals having special links with ICMI. But a very easy and (almost) universal access to the ICMI Bulletin now offered by modern technology is by means of the World Wide Web. Starting with issue No. 39 (December 1995), the ICMI Bulletin is posted on the ICMI webpage accessible at
http:/elib.zib.de/IMU/ICMI/bulletin/
It is intended that the ICMI Bulletin will keep its tradition of being a biannual publication with issues appearing in June and December. The deadlines for submitting material are respectively May 10 and November 10. The editor welcomes from the National Representatives and all other readers, for forthcoming issues of the Bulletin, news, announcements and articles which they think would be of interest to the international community of mathematics educators which the Bulletin seeks to serve.
Bernard R. Hodgson, Secretary