Agenda and announcements

• New set-up for newsletter

  This is the last issue of the newsletter in its present form. Starting January 2006, the newsletter will be replaced by two new webpages which can be accessed by links from the new home page of our institute, i.e., "Agenda" and "News." The agenda is meant for announcements of lectures, Ph.D. defenses and other events which are of interest also to people outside the Mathematical Institute. The news page is meant for news mainly of internal interest, such as personal notes, guests and visits to conferences. Robin de Jong has agreed to take care of both webpages.

  A new facility is, that people can post their copy themselves on both webpages (similarly as the agenda of the Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap). In this way it is possible to maintain an agenda on a permanent basis. Each month, Robin de Jong will collect the copy of those who prefer not to post their information themselves.

• Dutch Mathematical Conference 2006 on Monday March 27 and Tuesday March 28, 2006 in Delft

  The NMC 2006 and NMC 2007 (Dutch Mathematical Conferences of 2006 and 2007) are organized jointly by the mathematical institutes of the Technische Universiteit Delft and the Universiteit Leiden, under the auspices of the Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap. NMC 2006 will take place in Delft and NMC 2007 in Leiden.
  The organization committee of NMC 2006 consists of Jan Aarts, Martin van Gijzen, Klaas Pieter Hart, Arnold Heemink, Erik Koelink (chairman), Cor Kraaikamp, Ludolf Meester, Evelyn Sharabi, Fred Vermolen and Jacob van der Woude from Delft and Jan-Hendrik Evertse and Rein van der Hout from Leiden. Further information may be found on the webpage of the conference, http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/nw/nmc2006/.

• Philips Mathematics Prize for Ph.D. students

  On NMC 2006 there will be a special session, in which Ph.D. students will be given the opportunity to give a lecture of about 15 minutes on their work. A jury, consisting of Cor Baayen, Piet Wesseling and Willem van Zwet, will select the lecture which they consider the most interesting. The lectures should be addressed to a general mathematical audience. The jury will base its decision on both the contents and the quality of the presentation. An important selection criterion will be that the lecture is understandable to non-specialists. At the end of the conference, the winner will receive the "Philips Wiskundeprijs voor promovendi," consisting of a document and a prize of €500.

  The competition is open to Ph.D. students in any mathematical discipline working on a Dutch university. Anybody who wishes to take part is invited to send a short abstract (at most one A4) to the e-mail address of NMC 2006, nmc2006@ewi.tudelft.nl before February 1, 2006. The abstract may be written in either Dutch or English. Since the program allows only a limited number of lectures, the jury will make a first selection based on the submitted abstracts.

• Lectures in Analysis seminar on Tuesdays December 6 and 13

  December 6, 16:00-17:00, room 174:
  Evgeny Verbitskiy (Philips Research): Variational principle for Fuzzy Gibbs Measure

  December 13, 16:00-17:00, room 174:
  Vladas Sidoravicius: TBA.

  For further information, see http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~vivi/analyseweb/seminar.html.

• General Colloquium lectures on Thursdays December 8,15

  December 8: Dr. Patsy Haccou (UL, Institute of Biology): Effects of deleterious mutations on the evolution of reproductive modes.
  December 15: Prof. Philippe Clément (TUD/UL): Maximal regularity for differential equations in Banach spaces and R-boundedness.

  All lectures are from 16:00-17:00 in room 174 of the Snellius. The lectures are preceded by coffee and tea at 15:45 in room 174. See http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~evertse/colloquium.shtml for further information.

• Christmas Buffet Dinner on Thursday December 15

  The Christmas buffet dinner of 2005 will be in "Brasserie Park", Van Diepeningenlaan 2, Leiderdorp. Please inform Tineke Bakker-Bouma before December 9 if you (and your partner) want to take part in the dinner. (e-mail to tineke).

• Intercity Number Theory Seminar in Leiden on Friday December 16

  The lectures are in room 412 of the snellius. See http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~desmit/ic/current.html for further information.

• Unvealing of Snellius' quadrant on Monday January 16, 2006

  The original of Snellius' quadrant is in the Boerhaave Museum. At his farewell speech, Gerrit van Dijk was offered as a present a replica of this quadrant, to be placed in the entrance hall on the ground floor of our building. Meanwhile, the Mechanical Department of the LION (Leiden Institute for Physics) has constructed such a replica. On Monday January 16, starting 16:00 there will be a ceremony with the unvealing of the quadrant. This ceremony will be in the entrance hall of the ground floor of the Snellius.

  Program:
  Opening by P.J.J. van Daalen.
  Dr. R.H. van Gent: Gebruik van het kwadrant van Snellius.
  Drs. L.C. de Wreede: De mens Snellius.
  Dr. J.M. van den Broek: Wat komt er kijken voor een replica?
  Unvealing of the quadrant by Prof.dr. F.W. Saris en Prof.dr. G. van Dijk.
  Drink.

Personal notes

• New personnel

  - Joris Bierkens has started per December 1 as an AIO with Sjoerd Verduyn-Lunel.

  - Dr.ir. Onno W. van Gaans has been awarded a VIDI-grant by NWO. Starting January 1, 2006 he will be working at our institute in the Analysis and Stochastics group.

  - Prof.dr. Philippe P.J.E. Clement (Professor Emeritus of the Technische Universiteit Delft) will start per November 7 as a guest collaborator in the Analysis and Stochastics group.

Guests

• Guest of Marcel de Jeu:

  - Dr. Sergei Silvestrov (Lund): he will be visiting our institute for 8 months in total, supported by a visitor's grant from NWO. His first stay is in November and December 2005.

• Guest of Bert Peletier:

  - Prof. Catherine Bandle (Basel): she will visit our institute on December 11-16.

• Guests of Jan-Hendrik Evertse and Rob Tijdeman:

  - Attila Bérczes, Kálmán Györy, Lajos Hajdu and Ákos Pintér (Debrecen): they will visit our institute on January 17-28.

Visits outside our institute

- Rob Tijdeman: from December 11-23 he will visit the Tata Institute at Mumbai, India to participate into a memorial conference for prof. S. Srinivasan and a birthday conference for prof. T.N. Shorey.

- Sjoerd Verduyn Lunel: from December 13- January 6 he will visit the universities of Atlanta (host J.K. Hale) and Claremont (host K.L. Cooke).

Technical reports

MI 2005-13

R. Bröker, P. Stevenhagen: Constructing elliptic curves in almost polynomial time.