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Joint International Meeting of the AMS and the Sociedad de Matematica de Chile



The First AMS-SOMACHI joint meeting was held in Pucon, Chile, December 15-18, 2010, in a spectacularly beautiful setting, on a large lake and near Mount Villarrica, an active volcano. The meeting had about 300 participants, with about 150 from South America, 100 from North America, 50 from Europe, and a handful from Asia. There were five plenary talks on mathematics, panel discussions on mathematics education and science funding (comparing the situations in the US and Chile), and over 200 mathematical talks in 12 special sessions, coorganized by American and Chilean mathematicians. In addition, there were a number of "north-south" research teams, consisting of both senior and junior mathematicians, formed to continue research collaborations coming out of the meeting. Indeed, the meeting was distinguished by the high degree of cooperation between and mutual efforts of mathematicians from both North and South America. Participants at the meeting were enthusiastic about the high quality of the work presented, and the high level of mathematical interest and activity displayed, and participants greatly enjoyed the meeting as well. --- Steven Weintraub, AMS Associate Secretary

At the reception. Photo courtesy of Rubi E. Rodriguez.

At the Special Session on Complex Algebraic Geometry.
Photo courtesy of Giancarlo Urzua.

The scientific program, organized by representatives of both societies, included plenary speakers from each society. The invited speakers were:

  • Ricardo Baeza, Universidad de Talca, Chile, p-cohomological dimension of fields of characteristic p
  • Igor Dolgachev, University of Michigan, Cremona groups and their subgroups
  • Andres Navas, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Probabilistic, dynamical and topological aspects of orderable groups
  • Rodolfo Rodriguez, Universidad de Concepcion, Numerical approximation of the spectrum of the curl operator
  • Gunther Uhlmann, University of Washington, Inside-out: Inverse problems

There were 13 Special Sessions on the program, AMS Contributed Paper sessions, and a reception.

International meetings are a valuable addition to the Society's programs that foster contacts and collaborations: Including the AMS's first joint international meeting with the London Mathematical Society in 1992, the AMS has co-sponsored 27 meetings with sister societies in their host countries and the U.S. Upcoming in 2011 is the Joint SAMS-AMS Mathematics Conference (also supported by the LMS and SAMSA), November 29 - December 3, at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

--- Annette Emerson, AMS Public Awareness Officer