Early this year, the School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS) celebrated its tenth anniversary. It was formed in 1989, when the IAS Departments of Mathematics and Statistics left their respective Research Schools and joined the Department of Mathematics and the Commonwealth Special Research Centre for Mathematical Analysis of the Faculties. A further restructuring in 1993 strengthened the School's functioning as a single entity in the University (with a one line budget drawn from its different components). The present SMS comprises two Divisions. The Centre for Mathematics and its Applications (CMA) is a major international research institute in mathematical and statistical science, with staff from both Institute and Faculties, while the Department of Mathematics, strongly interwoven with the CMA through research programs and common infrastructure, also conducts an undergraduate teaching program through the Faculty of Science.
The SMS research spreads across a diverse range of theory and applications. These days, theoretical, computational and applied aspects of the mathematical sciences are strongly integrated. Major pure mathematical discoveries at the ANU, notably in fractal theory and curvature flow, have led to impressive technological developments overseas. Despite a relatively small and potentially crippling budget, the School has performed extremely well, as attested by output and recognition. For example, the current staff includes seven Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science, two Fellows of the Royal Society and nine ARC Fellows.
While the fusion of research and teaching, Institute and Faculties, embodied in the SMS is vigorously supported within the School and commended by our peers elsewhere, it has not been administratively easy for the SMS to fit comfortably in the ANU, which itself is grappling with change, midst perceptions of declining traditional values and managerial performance. But above all, I believe the SMS is one part of the ANU that has clearly earned the right of admission to the next century in a university context.
The above text is taken from the ANU Reporter, (Vol. 30, No. 16), October 13, 1999 Focus on School of Mathematical Sciences, where a selection of current research projects in the SMS is also featured.
The School's record of achievements, in its first ten years, continued to build in 1999. The contributions of the School to research and training are presented in the reports of the CMA and the Department of Mathematics as well as the eight research programs of the School. The descriptions of research undertaken in these programs has been separated for the first time in this annual report, thereby avoiding repetition and conforming at the same time with the research alignments in the School as a whole.
Major research awards received by SMS members in 1999 were the 1999 Australian Mathematical Society Medal to John Urbas for his research on nonlinear partial differential equations and a 1999 Humboldt Award to Daryl Daley to carry out research in Germany, on long range dependence theory. The Australian Mathematical Society Medal is normally awarded annually for research in the mathematical sciences, (by a researcher whose age is not greater than 40). The 1998 Medal also went to SMS (Murray Batchelor) and the SMS and its ancestors have accounted for seven of these medals since the first award in 1981 (N S Trudinger). Humboldt Awards cover all academic disciplines and are awarded annually to senior international researchers to engage in research in Germany. In recent years, the SMS has won two such awards (N S Trudinger, 1996) as well as four Humboldt Fellowships for young researchers, (A Isaev, E O'Brien, J Urbas, 1995, M Kocan, 1997). Graduate students in the School also achieved success at the Combined Australian-American Mathematical Societies Meeting in Melbourne in July, with Csaba Schneider winning the B H Neumann Prize for best student talk and Denis Labutin gaining an Honourable Mention for content. Another graduate student, Nick Dungey, won an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship. With John Urbas winning a Senior Fellowship, the number of ARC Fellows in the School in 2000 should be eleven, an all time high!
A major contribution to mathematics education and exposition was the publication of the book by Brian Davies, ``Exploring Chaos: Theory and Experiment", based on a lecture course which he has developed in the Department of Mathematics over the last several years. The book has already been acclaimed in several reviews and should have a tremendous impact in the coming years.
Four staff members retired around the end of 1999 after long careers at the ANU. Professors Mike Newman and Mike Osborne of the CMA were honoured by conferences organised by their respective professional groups. Mike Newman was also made an Honorary Life Member of the Australian Mathematical Society in recognition of his many years of service, and an issue of the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society was dedicated to him. They, along with Haralds Petersens and Martin Ward of the Department of Mathematics, will continue their membership of the School through Visiting Fellowships.
The retirements in 1999 will be followed by others in the next few years. This should provide good opportunity for the School to address issues of demographic and gender balance. During the year a Working Party on Equity and Diversity, chaired by Dr Elizabeth Ormerod, was set up to make specific policy recommendations. The School continues to ensure that there is positive gender and geographic representation among its Visiting Fellows. Also, the School is actively involved in improving the mathematical profile in schools, with a view to creating a better balance of both students and academic staff in the future.
Two of the founders of the Mathematical Sciences at the ANU were honoured during the year. The building linking the Crisp, Hanna-Neumann and John Dedman Mathematical Sciences building was named the P.A.P. Moran Building at a Naming Ceremony hosted by the School in April. The late Professor Pat Moran was the Foundation Professor of Statistics in the IAS. Also the School honoured Professor Bernhard Neumann, Foundation Professor of Mathematics in the IAS, through a meeting celebrating his ninetieth birthday in October.
Finances and Planning
On the Faculties side, the funding of the Department of Mathematics continued to be a problem. The Department was reduced by three posts at the end of 1999 (and early 2000) bringing its projected commitments in line with the revenue that (according to SMS estimates) should have been passed on in 1999. The resolution of the deficit issue is an ongoing matter for consideration.
The SMS-IAS budget was effectively balanced at the end of 1999, with no deficit carried forward. This was a better result than anticipated and provides more flexibility for the future. The Chair of Advanced Computation was advertised and offered; (turned down in 2000).