The Australian Mathematical Society and the American Mathematical Society have reached agreement to hold a joint meeting in Melbourne during July 1999.

The notion of the joint meeting was triggered when the Australian Mathematical Society President, Professor Alf van der Poorten, was invited to participate in the Special Session on Number Theory run at a joint AMS-SAMS (South African Mathematical Society) meeting in Pretoria earlier in the year. That joint meeting is said to have been a roaring success.

Discussions then took place between Professor van der Poorten and Dr Susan Friedlander (the AMS associate secretary who handled their part of the organization for the Pretoria meeting) about a similar joint meeting with the Aust MS.

This idea was raised at the Aust MS Annual Meeting in Auckland in July 1997 and received a fairly enthusiastic response. Following this were some protracted negotiations about the time and the place for such a joint meeting.

Extensive North American participation would need the meeting to be held in July. The best year for the Australian Mathematical Society seemed to be 2000. This was not good for the American Mathematical Society because they had begun planning for big celebrations that year. The years 2001 and 2002 were also not good for the AMS due to other international plans underway.

It seemed that July 1999 was the time. And the place? The Gazette has now received extremely sensitive documents suggesting highly inflamatory allegations were made about the weather in Melbourne in July. However, Dr Friedlander and an expert team of advisers sought independent opinions on this and following some high level negotiation, the place was decided - Melbourne.

Further details of this meeting will appear in the Gazette during 1998. 120 Mathematics Annex\\ USA\\ email: lindncc@mail.auburn.edu