Grant for the support of US participants at the Banff International Research Station

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Award: DMS-0124838 Principal Investigator: David Eisenbud The Banff International Research Station (BIRS), supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley in collaboration with the Pacific Institute of the Mathematical Sciences in Vancouver, Canada, will provide an environment that optimizes creative interaction and the exchange of ideas, knowledge and methods within the mathematical sciences and with related sciences and industry. It is modeled on the extremely successful European mathematics centers in Oberwolfach and Luminy, and the US physics center in Aspen. It is a collaborative Canada-US venture. BIRS will pursue an extremely broad program, embracing all aspects of the mathematical sciences, from the most fundamental work on the great problems of algebra, geometry and analysis to modern pure and applied mathematics, theoretical and applied statistics, financial and industrial mathematics, the mathematics of information technology and computer science, and bio-mathematics. Conferences on math education, and Schools ranging in level from high-school to postgraduate will also be regular features. A conference center in Germany called Oberwolfach has played an enormously important role mathematics for more than half a century. Conferences there bring the greatest mathematicians from around the world to Germany, and this flow of people and ideas is often credited with aiding the quick recovery of German mathematics from the devastation it suffered during the war. It also helped by introducing generations of graduate students to the great men in their fields and to each other. The Oberwolfach model was so successful that the French eventually copied it at the center in Luminy. Senior US mathematicians are often visitors to these centers, but often graduate students and younger mathematicians from the United States and Canada are not invited, and there are many other ways in which those centers benefit Europe much more than the US. The physics center in Aspen has provided a resource for the US physics community that has provided related services, and the mathematicians who happen to have been involved have been impressed with what can be done in this mode. It has long been a dream of North American mathematicians to have a conference center of their own that would provide similar opportunities here, and the goal of the Banff International Research Station is to provide this important resource for mathematics and related fields.