This report marks the end of my first year as President. One important feature of the year has been the assessment of the current activities of the Society carried out by the circulation, in November 1994, of a questionnaire probing members' opinions concerning the Society's operations. Over 300 members, approximately 25% of the total, took the trouble to complete and return this questionnaire. Although 25% is far from a majority it is a satisfyingly high response from an overworked clientele. An analysis of the responses will be given elsewhere but broadly speaking there was a high level of satisfaction with the journal operations but rather less with the annual conference. Half the respondents were happy with the move to electronic publication and it was interesting that 65% of them make general use of the internet and 87% use email. There was strong support for continuing with an annual winter conference and there was a heavy emphasis on the research profile of the meetings. Council will have to consider carefully the future planning of the conferences and the mathematical programs. One small surprise was the relatively low priority members gave to policy formation and lobbying activities. The respondents clearly focussed on those aspects of the Society's operations which were directly mathematical.
A second important review which has progressed throughout the year is the National Strategy Review in the Mathematical Sciences . The footwork for this review has been carried out by a working party led by Noel Barton (CSIRO) with myself, Alf van der Poorten (Macquarie), Michael Barber (Western Australia), Tim Brown (Melbourne) and Ed van Leeuwen (BHP). Although this work will not be completed until the 20th July the committee report is at draft stage.
One pair of recommendations which directly involve the Society concern the establishment of National Centres for supporting and developing the national research capability in the mathematical sciences. The first recommendation suggests the creation of a centre for industrial and applied research under the auspices of the cooperative research centres program. The second recommendation strongly supports the suggestion of the 1992 review of the ARC Large Grants Scheme in the Mathematical Sciences that there should be an Australian equivalent of the Fields Institute in Canada or the Isaac Newton Institute in England. The Australian Physical Society have already made moves to create a National Centre in Theoretical Physics and solved the initial problem of location by holding a competition among universities to host the centre. The competition was won by a consortium of universities, Adelaide, ANU, Melbourne and New South Wales with the major part of the activities located in Adelaide. Both the ARC Large Grant Review and the National Strategy Review have suggested the Mathematical Society should organize a similar competitive process for the mathematics centre. The main problem of funding still remains to be resolved, both for physics and mathematics. The proposed centres do not fit well into past ARC schemes for Special Centres but it is hoped that this will change in the next round which is expected later this year.
The Society has also been involved this year in negotiating for international conferences. An approach was made last year about a possible Australian bid for the International Congress in 2002. I also understand that ANZIAM is hoping to bring the main applied mathematics conference ICIAM to Australia in 2001. Since the project to host the Congress in 2002 was greeted with some enthusiasm at the last AGM I have asked Hyam Rubinstein to investigate the possibilities and problems of such a bid with the help of a representative committee. The prospect of organizing such meetings is rather daunting. This year's ICIAM meeting in Hamburg will have nearly two thousand speakers, and the funding anticipated for a bid to host the Congress is of the order of $800,000. Since there is no government tradition of funding such conferences and no apparent mechanism currently in place a new innovative approach is essential. On a smaller scale the Society supported a bid to host the 1997 Triennial Conference of the International Association of Mathematical Physics. This bid, which gained its main financial support from the Centre of Mathematics and its Applications at the ANU and from the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland, was successful in direct competition with Shanghai. It is now scheduled to take place in Brisbane in July 1997 in the week directly after the Society's Annual Winter Conference. The New Zealand Mathematical Society has proposed that the 1997 Conference should be a joint meeting in Auckland. In addition to these possibilities it has been proposed that the Society should support a major Australasian meeting to mark the year 2000. Suggestions about this proposal would be welcome.
Finally a few words about policy and pressure. The main science and lobbying organization is FASTS which was formed in the 1980s to focus the interests of the professional societies, to pressure the government to support science and to rebut the accusation that all scientists were wimps. After a period of difficulties FASTS has been strengthened and rejuvenated. Over the last year it developed a comprehensive policy statement, A Science Policy for Australia in the 21st Century , which was officially launched at Parliament House on the 9th June. The Society is represented on FASTS through its membership of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Council. The AMSC is another umbrella organization covering the mathematics, statistics and mathematics education societies together with the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. This year the AAMT foreshadowed its withdrawal from the AMSC and in principle this step could jeopardize the FASTS representation. The AMSC is, however, under its new president, Jan Thomas (VUT), attempting to widen its base by possible incorporation of operations research and engineering interests. I am confident that the AMSC will retain its membership of FASTS and the Mathematical Society will continue to shape and influence science policy through this mechanism.