The New Year has begun with a flurry of activity. The report by the Working Party of the ARC National Strategy Review in the Mathematical Sciences has now been published. It was officially, and enthusiastically, launched by Professor Gus Nossal, President of the Australian Academy of Science, in Canberra on the 23rd January at a meeting attended by about 80 people. Subsequently, on the 23rd of February, features of the report were highlighted at a one-day symposium organized by the National Committee for Mathematics and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Council at the University of New South Wales. The latter meeting was very successful with an attendance of over 120. The presentations were aimed at explaining the pervasiveness and utility of the mathematical sciences and were targeted at a general audience. Publication of the proceedings is currently under discussion. They should be particularly useful to Society members who are often pressed to explain their activities to unenlightened colleagues or to representatives of the media.
The report of the Working Party is available from the ARC and I would encourage all members to obtain a copy. I am sure that it will be the subject of extended commentary so I will limit myself to a few remarks. The overall impression is very positive. The general findings stress the importance for Australia of a sound research base in the mathematical sciences, the critical relevance of mathematics to economic and technological development and the multi-disciplinary nature of all things mathematical. Although the overall picture is one of healthy development there are a number of problems which have to be addressed, the recruitment of good quality students, the development of career opportunities for young mathematicians and redressing the age and gender imbalances in the profession.
A second cause of heightened activity has been the preparation of ARC grant proposals. I wish the best for all members who have submitted proposals for Large Grants but the funding will again be tight this year and the success rate low. The ARC has also called for proposals for its Special Research Centres program. It was recommended in the Strategy Review that the guidelines of this program be changed to allow funding of National Centres in the style of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) at Berkeley, the Fields Institute in Toronto, or the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge. But the ARC, in its collective wisdom, has already rejected this proposal. (The ARC and its Advisory Committees have approximately 55 members only one of whom is a mathematician; mathematics does, however, have reasonable representation on the Physical Sciences panel which handles Large Grants.) The implication of this decision, which was clarified under questioning of the Chairman of the ARC at the meetings mentioned above, is that there is no apparent funding source for the foundation of a National Centre for the Mathematical Sciences. It also means that the Theoretical Physics Centre created last year in Adelaide has no assured funding mechanism. Despite these problems there have to my knowledge been at least three mathematics proposals for Special Research Centres under the old guidelines approved by their respective universities. Thus mathematics will have representation in the ARC competition which in the past has been less than generous to the theoretical disciplines.
Plans for international mathematical conferences in Australia are proceeding. The annual meeting of ANZIAM, which was held in Masterton, New Zealand, unanimously approved a proposal to bid for the International Conference in Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) in Sydney in 2003. This proposal has been subsequently endorsed by the Steering Committee and is currently being considered by Council. The final submission has to be ready for May. Simultaneously a bid is being prepared for the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Sydney in 2002. The details of this bid, which must be finalized by November, will be considered at the Annual Meeting of Council in July. The latter preparation was aided by a recent visit of Professor Huzihiro Araki who organized the ICM in Kyoto in 1990. He was in Australia overseeing arrangements for the 1997 International Conference on Mathematical Physics in Brisbane which is being supported by the Society. He has subsequently presented a favorable report on preparations.
Other points of interest which arose from the February 16th meeting of Steering Committee included the following.
Finally the downward trend in university mathematics enrolments which has occurred in the past few years is a continuing cause for concern. The decline this year does not appear to be so marked but at the time of writing no reliable statistics are available.
The last issue of the Gazette contained some errors.