The Mathematical Institute Newsletter is maintained by Jan-Hendrik Evertse. The newsletter will be issued the first week of each month, except for July and August. The electronic version of the newsletter can be found on http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~evertse/newsletter.shtml
(go to the homepage of the Mathematical Institute and click on "Newsletter").

There will be no newsletter in July and August. Copy for the September newsletter, such as announcements, personal notes, visits to conferences, guests, lectures of general interest, PhD.-defenses or doctoral exams under your supervision, or other announcements of general interest should be sent by e-mail to evertse@math.leidenuniv.nl before August 27. Copy should be submitted in English plaintext, so that it can be inserted into the newsletter without time consuming typing or translating work.

Agenda and announcements

• Ph-D. defense of Dinard van der Laan on Tuesday {!} June 24 at 3:00 pm
   
  On Tuesday June 24 Dinard van der Laan will defend his Ph.D.-thesis, entitled The structure and performance of optimal routing sequences. Promotors are Prof.dr. A. Hordijk and Prof.dr. R. Tijdeman.
  Prof. B. Gaujal (ENS, Lyon) is referee. The session starts at 3:00 pm.

• Workshop Diophantine approximation (July 28-August 2) and Symposium in honour of the 60th birthday of Prof. Tijdeman (July 30)
   
  From Monday July 28-Saturday August 2 there will be a workshop on Diophantine approximation at the Lorentz Center. On Wednesday July 30 there will be a special symposium for a general audience to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prof. Robert Tijdeman which is also at the Lorentz Center. Lectures on this symposium will be given by Wolfgang Schmidt (University of Boulder, USA), Vera T. Sós (Renyi Institute, Budapest), Cameron L. Stewart (University of Waterloo, Canada), and Michel Waldschmidt (Institut de Mathématique de Jussieu, Paris). Both the workshop and the symposium are organized by Frits Beukers (Utrecht), Pieter Moree (Amsterdam) and Jan-Hendrik Evertse.
  See http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~evertse/RTXL.shtml.

• Meeting of the Review Committee for Research in Mathematics from August 26-28.
   
  The Review Committee for mathematical research in The Netherlands will receive delegations of all mathematical institutes of Dutch universities from August 26-28. The committee is chaired by Prof.dr. Hans G. Kaper (NSF, Arlington/Washington, USA).

• Cooperation between the Mathematical Institute and NEMO (science museum in Amsterdam)
   
  There will be a cooperation between the Mathematical Institute and NEMO (see http://www.e-nemo.nl), the science museum on top of the IJ-tunnel in Amsterdam, starting this summer. The purpose of the project is to replace the present mathematics exhibition about eurodiffusion by a new interactive exhibition showing the Droste effect and conformal transformations. From June-September, Theun de Vreede (student Computer Science at the Haagse Hogeschool specialized in "design of interaction") will do a final project under supervision of Bart de Smit, in which he will develop the above mentioned exhibition.
   
  Deze zomer begint een samenwerkingsproject van het Mathematisch Instituut met NEMO (zie http://www.e-nemo.nl), het wetenschapsmuseum op de IJ-tunnel in Amsterdam. Doel is de huidige wiskunde-attractie over eurodiffusie te vervangen door een interactieve opstelling met het Droste-effect en conforme transformaties. Theun de Vreede, student "Informatica en Informatiekunde" aan de Haagse Hogeschool met afstudeerrichting "Vormgeving en ontwerp van Interactie" zal hier in de maanden Juni-September aan het MI een afstudeerproject van maken onder begeleiding van Bart de Smit.

• Presentation of the Abel prize 2003 to Jean-Pierre Serre on June 3 in Oslo
   
  In 2002, the Norwegian government established the Niels Henrik Abel Memorial Fund, with the objective of awarding an international prize for outstanding mathematical research. The first Abel prize has been awarded in 2003. The Abel laureates are chosen by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, at the advice of the Abel committee which is appointed by the Academy. According to the press release of the Academy, the Abel Prize for 2003 has been awarded to Jean-Pierre Serre (Collège de France, Paris, France), "for playing a key role in shaping the modern form of many parts of mathematics, including topology, algebraic geometry and number theory".
  The Abel prize 2003 will be presented to Jean-Pierre Serre on June 3. The ceremony will start at 2:00 pm in the aula of the University of Oslo. Further information can be found on http://www.abelprisen.no/index_english.html.
  The Dutch website http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~impact/jaargangen/1/april/Tijdeman.html gives an overview of the other existing mathematical prizes. On http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/why_no_math.html there is a discussion why there is no Nobel prize for mathematics.
   
  (This message has been suggested by Gerard Westhoff (2nd year mathematics student)).

Personal notes

• New employees (permanent faculty):
   
  

  - Dr. Sander C. Hille (ud), per May 1, 2003, research group Analysis (Prof.dr. S.J. Verduyn Lunel)

  "I am working as assistant professor in the group of Sjoerd Verduyn Lunel, tasked to increase the research effort on the topic of Computational Life Science (CLS). That is, the application and development of mathematical tools, techniques and results to biological (dynamical) systems. My background is in analysis, in particular harmonic analysis and infinite dimensional representations of Lie groups, with Gerrit van Dijk in Leiden. Previously I worked at the Telematica Instituut in Enschede on 'business models' in relation to technology adoption and diffusion, for example for electronic payment."

Guests

• Guests of S.A. van de Geer:
   
  - Bineeta Adityan (Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam)
  - Bernadetta Tarigan

• Guests of B. Edixhoven:
   
  - Ariane Mezard (Orsay, France) is visiting our institute from February 1- July 31. She works in Arithmetic Algebraic Geometry.
  - Emmanuel Ficatier (student at the École Polytechnique at Palaiseau) is visiting the geometry group from April 7-July 2. He is doing a traineeship on factorization methods for large integers based on elliptic curves.

• Guests of R. Tijdeman:
   
  - A. Bérczes, L. Hajdu and A. Pintér (Debrecen) will visit Leiden from May 25 to June 7.

• Guest of A. Hordijk and R. Tijdeman:
   
  - Prof. B. Gaujal (ENS, Lyon) will visit the institute from June 23-27.

• Guest of B. de Smit:
   
  - Lara Thomas (Toulouse) will be at the Mathematical Institute during June. Her visit is funded by the European Network GETM.

Working visits/visits to conferences

- M. Lübke will visit the University of Marseille from June 1-8 for collaboration with A. Teleman.
- M.S. Stupariu will attend the seminar on Geometry and Combinatorics of Representations of Quivers in Oberwolfach from June 8-14.
- S.A. van de Geer will attend the Cowles workshop in Yale, June 15-20 and the Purdue Symposium, June 21-24. Further she will be at the Joint Statistical Meeting in San Francisco from August 4-7.
- G. van Dijk will attend the conference "Kolmogorov and contemporary mathematics" in Moscow from June 15-21. Further he will attend the conference in honour of the 60th birthday of Prof. Tom Koornwinder in Amsterdam from August 25-27. At both conferences he will give an invited lecture.
- P. Stevenhagen will attend the Conference on Explicit Methods in Number Theory (organized by H. Cohen, H.W. Lenstra and D. Zagier) in Oberwolfach from July 20-25.
- B. de Smit will give a lecture at the MSRI Summer Graduate Program "Mathematical Graphics", July 14-25, at reed College, Portland, Oregon. Further he will attend the Conference on Explicit Methods in Number Theory in Oberwolfach.
- R. Tijdeman will attend the Journées Arithmétiques in Graz (Austria) from July 6-11. Further he will visit the Technical University of Vienna from July 1-6.

Technical reports

MI 2003-08		L. Ferracina and M.N. Spijker: An extension and analysis for the Shu-osher representation of Runge-Kutta methods
MI 2003-09		H.J. Hupkes: Analysis of Newton's Method to Compute Travelling Wave Solutions to Lattice Differential Equations
MI 2003-10		L.A. Peletier and Vivi Rotschäfer: Pattern selection of solutions of the Swift-Hohenberg equation