VIGRE

What do you do if the Prize Winner doesn't apply?

The Geek Notes Blog, devoted to TeX mostly, has a pleasant diversion on the
topic of Alexander Perelman, who may have used notions of Richard Hamilton to solve the Poincare Conjecture.

The speicfic blog entry points to an article in the Boston Globe on the subject, and mentions this
American Institute of Math Conference devoted to these advances.

But, it may be that Perelman will not publish his papers. The Poincare conjecture is a Million Dollar problem, thanks to the genoristy of the Clay Math Institute. The specific rules for awarding this prize money are listed on the web site seem hide bound. A committee to evaluate the claim wont be convened until two years after publication in a referred Math journal. Perelman may not publish, though he has posted his papers on the Arxiv. They have been availibe there since 2002. One suspects that the Clay Math Institute will find a way around this bind.

Jefferson Science Fellows

The Jefferson Science Fellows is a new opportunity for a faculty member to
serve as a Science, Technology, and Engineering advisor to the US State Deparment.

The program, in its first year, has a more complete description at the web page
linked above.

Students being sought for Math Modeling Contest

Math Contest in Modeling pits teams of undergraduates from across the nation
against a single problem. The teams use mathematical modeling to present their solutions to the assigned real world problem.

MCM will take place February 5--9, 2004. That is a Thursday to a Monday, but the solution has to be received by courier at the COMAP offices by 5pm on Monday February 9.

Professor Mason Porter (who else?) is interested in recruiting students for the competition.

The competition is sponsored by COMAP, the consortium for math and it's applications. Some past competition problems are availible, and solutions are availible by googling some thing like
Math Modeling Contest.

2^{20996011} – 1 is Prime

The world's largest prime, a Mersenne Prime, has been discovered.
The method of discovery was through a collaborative, distributive
effort, called the "Great Internet Prime Search."

There is a very nice editorial on the discovery, "What's It Do? Nothing, but Mathematicians Relish the Quest" by Fernando Q. Gouvêa, Mathematician at Colby College.

Or you can goole the news to find a host of related news stories.

An Archimedes Puzzle Solved

An ancient text of Archmides has just received a startling new interpretation:
Archimedies cound the number of ways that some strips can be rearranged into
a square, and the answer is 17,152.

The NYT article by Gina Kolata is interesting but does not fully state the problem.

The manner by which the manuscript is availible to us is quite involved and interesting. See the article for full details. The find was made by Reviel Netz, who is a featured researcher at the Archimedes Palimpset Project.

The NYT requires a login: Use "gtmath" with password "Atlanta"

Sotheatern Geometry Days

The Southeast Geometry Seminar will take place at Emory next Wednesday December 10.

This is a semiannual event, organized by Emory, Georgia Tech, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. John McCuan will report on joint work
with undergrad Ryan Hynd, work which started in the 2002 VIGRE REU.

Call for World Directory of Home Pages

A Message from the International Mathematics Union:

4. PERSONAL HOME PAGES AND AN ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE
WORLD DIRECTORY OF MATHEMATICIANS (EWDM): A SUGGESTION OF THE CEIC

After the discontinuation of the WDM was announced in IMU-Net 1 a
number of colleagues asked whether it would be possible to establish
an electronic version of WDM. The IMU Committee on Electronic Information
and Communication (CEIC, see http://www.ceic.math.ca) has attended to
this request and investigated the possibilities.

Due to the limited financial means of the IMU there is no way to set up
and maintain a central registry such as the combined membership list of
AMS/MAA/SIAM/etc., see
http://www.ams.org/cml

It seems feasible, though, to keep a central list - based on distributed
input and voluntary contributions. CEIC proposes to give this idea a try
and start with a basic version of an Electronic World Directory of
Mathematicians (EWDM).

The CEIC would like to couple this suggestion with the request to every
mathematician to offer a personal homepage on the Web. With respect to
the contents and structure of such a personal homepage CEIC proposes the
design of a standardized personal homepage for mathematicians, to be
called the Mathematician's Professional Homepage (MPH), that contains
personal mathematical information in an organized fashion - just as the
Math-Net Page is designed to display institutional mathematical
information in a structured way. The design comes in two versions, a
simple design and a more elaborate one.

The plea to offer and maintain a structured personal webpage should not
be interpreted as a bureaucratic dampening of individual style. Reasons
why structured webpages are desirable can be found at
http://www.mathunion.org/MPH-EWDM

The Personal Homepage Call

IMU asks every mathematician to set up and maintain a personal homepage.
IMU requests that this homepage is presented in a userfriendly way, and
suggests a structure along the lines of the Mathematician's Professional
Homepage (MPH).

The Electronic World Directory of Mathematicians Call

IMU plans to set up and maintain an Electronic World Directory of
Mathematicians (EWDM). Every mathematician who has a homepage is asked to
register the homepage through the EWDM registration mechanism, see
http://www.mathunion.org/ewdm/join.php

For detailed information on these suggestions click on
http://www.mathunion.org/MPH-EWDM

Please follow these calls!

High School Mathematics Competition

The Pi Mu Epsilon club is organizing a High School Mathematics Competition,
to be held Saturday, 20 March 2004, on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, Georgia.

The web site for it has more details. At the one day event, there will be different competitions,
with the top prizes being one time $1000 scholarships to attend Georgia Tech.

The officers of the club Alan Michaels, Stephanie Bent and Patty Pichardo
(Pictures are here!) have been putting a lot of effort into it. Here's hoping for a great event to revive this old tradition.

Steve Lansel's Billiard Software

Last summer's REU program continues to yield projects and iniatives from the students involved. Steven Lansel, double major in EE and Math, designed
software to simulate the paths of billiards. Follow the Link for the Matlab program, a number of examples, and documentation.

This figure is of the Bunimovich Stadium. We know the motion of the ball is chaotic, due to the work of Professor Bunimovich.