January 1975 Council Minutes
22 JANUARY 1975
Minutes of the Council
The Council met on January 22, 1975 at 2:00 PM in the Tudor Room of
the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. Members present were Robert Bartle,
Hyman Bass, Paul Bateman, Anatole Beck, Lipman Bers, James Bramble, Edgar
Brown, Jr., Philip Church, W. Wistar Comfort, Charles Curtis, Chandler Davis,
Samuel Eilenberg, David Gale, Leonard Gillman, Richard R. Goldberg, Michael
Golomb, Walter Gottschalk, Mary Gray, Judy Green, Paul Halmos, Orville Harrold,
Herbert B. Keller, Robion Kirby, D. J. Lewis, Lee Lorch, Saunders Mac Lane,
Arthur Mattuck, Richard K. Miller, John Milnor, Cathleen Morwaetz, Karl K.
Norton, Barbara Osofsky, Franklin Peterson, Everett Pitcher, Kenneth Ross,
Jane Cronin Scanlon, Stephen Shaftz, Francois Treves, Hans Weinberger, and
J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. Present by invitation were James Donaldson, John
Isbell, Edwin Moise, G.D. Mostow, and Lowell Schoenfeld. Also present were
Henry Alder, Jacob Burlak, H. Daly, Lincoln Durst, R. Hahn, and G.L. Walker.
President Bers was in the chair.
The minutes of the meeting of October 22, 1974 had been distributed by
mail. The Secretary noted that the end of the minutes was omitted in
transcription and duplication. The material omitted reads as follows:
Prof. Fossum offered a motion of thanks to President Mac Lane at the
close of the last meeting at which he presided. It was seconded and
then passed by acclamation.
With this addition, the minutes of October 22, 1974 were approved.
The Council adjourned at l0:45 PM.
Dates and places for the next 3 meetings of the Council were offered
for consideration as follows:
St. Louis April ll, 1975 (Friday)
Kalamazoo August l9, 1975 (Tuesday)
San Antonio January 2l, 1976 (Wednesday)
It was noted that it had already been desirable to announce the spring meeting
tentatively, since preliminary announcements of spring meetings appeared in the
January NOTICES. The Executive Committee recommended the time and place in St.
Louis. The meetings in Kalamazoo and in San Antonio follow precedent strictly.
Prof. Beck moved that the meeting in the spring be in New York on
March 22, 1975. This date was changed by agreement during the discussion to
March 24. However, the motion failed. The three dates and places listed above
were then approved.
Because of an error by the Secretary, the replacement by the Council of
Jacob Feldman by Chandler Davis on the Editorial Committee of the PROCEEDINGS,
was incorrectly scheduled. It was arranged for an interval of mutual conven-
ience through about the end of l974. It should have been stated to be through
about the end of l975. The Secretary requested the Council to approve the
replacement through the latter date. The Council approved by acclamation.
The Council had requested the Editorial Committee of the PROCEEDINGS to
lay the groundwork for a discussion of editorial policy at this meeting of the
Council. The charge to the Editorial Committee is attached. Prof. Comfort,
Chairman of the Editorial Committee, presented the attached report, containing
recommendations.
The recommendations in the report were discussed at length, both by the
Council and by Prof. Isbell at the invitation of the President. There was a
motion, embodying the first recommendation, that there be no substantial
structural change in the form or style of the PROCEEDINGS. It was passed.
The second recommendation was recast during the discussion into the
following motion: The Editors of the PROCEEDINGS are charged with upgrading
the contents of the journal; they will be helped by a statement of what papers
are publishable, to be displayed prominently in the PROCEEDINGS and announced
in the NOTICES. The motion passed. It was agreed that the wording of the
statement was the responsibility of the Editorial Committee.
The third recommendation was offered as a motion that to the maximal
extent consistent with financial responsibility, the PROCEEDINGS return to a
"zero backlog" publication policy. The motion passed. It was recognized as
a recommendation to the Trustees.
Mary Gray raised the issue "blind refereeing". It was discussed at
length. During part of the discussion President Bers yielded the chair to
Prof. Milnor. The discussion finally resulted in a motion by Milnor that
blind refereeing be tried by the PROCEEDINGS as a two-year experiment. The
motion passed. It was understood that the experiment be started at the
discretion of the Editors, as soon as reasonably possible, and that it be
reviewed two years after it is begun.
Prof. Mattuck, Chairman of the Committee on Principles of Reciprocity,
presented the attached report. It contains a statement of principles, with
alternatives, and a proposal by Prof. Edwin E. Moise, one of the members,
headed Proposal: Reduced Rates for All Foreign Mathematicians. The attached
report from the Executive Director titled Reciprocity, explores financial
implications of the Moise proposal. The Committee report includes summaries of
arguments. The report was discussed at length. Prof. Eilenberg offered the
following motion: The Council having heard and discussed the report of the
Mattuck Committee, expresses in principle its agreement with the proposal to
abolish all reciprocity agreements and to offer membership to foreign
mathematicians at reduced rates; to instruct the President to appoint a
committee which will coordinate a complete proposal after due consultation with
the Mattuck Committee, with the Trustees, and with some of the leading
mathematical societies with which we now have reciprocity agreements. During
subsequent discussion, an amendment by Prof. Lorch to replace "some of the
leading" with "all" was defeated. The motion then passed. The Mattuck
Committee received thanks by acclamation but was not discharged.
Prof. G.D. Mostow, Chairman of the ad hoc Committee on Science Policy,
distributed the attached report. [Note one misprint: Read "national" for
"natural" in p. l, L. -12.] The Council endorsed the report in principle. It
was agreed that the Committee continue to function, with further instruction
from the President.
Past President Mac Lane was not in the chamber during the presentation
of the preceding report.
Prof. Mary Gray wished to introduce a motion allowing nomination by
petition for various additional offices, specifically President-Elect and
Trustee. President Bers observed that this was among the matters under
consideration by the Committee on Committees and that the effect of intro-
ducing Prof. Gray's proposed motion could be accomplished by requesting the
Committee to report on that particular point at the April Council meeting.
A proposal from Prof. Marshall Stone for a Bicentennial Program,
consisting of a semi-public seminar, possibly titled MATHEMATICS:
RETROSPECTIVE, PERSPECTIVE, AND PROJECTIVE was received. A description is
attached. There was some discussion of the proposal in comparison with or in
addition to proposals under consideration for a joint meeting with the London
Mathematical Congress and for special events at the meeting of January l976 in
San Antonio. A motion was passed to authorize a committee to investigate the
various proposals and to express interest to the London Mathematical Society
in some form of joint meeting.
Prof. Barbara Osofsky, in the attached letter, proposed that a certain
letter to be published in the NOTICES and that a resolution stated in the
letter be supported by the Council. The Secretary, following advice that he
had received previously in similar cases, delayed publication unless and until
instructed by the Council. His reply, outlining the reasoning, is attached.
Prof. Osofsky then offered the resolution, revised as follows:
We protest the action of the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization in excluding Israel from participating
in any regional groupings and receiving benefits from the activities
of that organization. The purpose of UNESCO is to foster educational
scientific and cultural activities. The AMS will not cooperate with
UNESCO until this situation is rectified.
An account of the dispute extracted from SCIENCE, 186, ll00, is attached. One
is cautioned that there is not agreement among opposing partisans that the
account correctly represents the situation.
The resolution was deemed subject to Article IV, Section 8, of the
Bylaws. The exception noted in the next to last paragraph was not available
because unanimous consent was denied by Prof. Pitcher. During the discussion
the sentence on "purpose" was replaced by the following statement taken from
official sources: The purpose of UNESCO is to promote collaboration among
nations through education, science and culture in order to further justice,
rule of law, and human rights and freedoms without distinction of race, sex,
language, or religion. There was a procedural resolution to instruct the
Secretary to conduct a ballot among the entire Council by mail after 30 days.
In a roll call vote ("by fractions") there were l3 and ll/12's votes in favor
and l4 and l/12 votes opposed. Accordingly, the main resolution effectively
failed.
The Council authorized publication in the NOTICES of a Letter to the
Editor by Prof. Osofsky concerning her resolution, with a note by the Secretary
concerning the Council action.
It was then 6:30 PM and the Council adjourned for dinner until 8:00 PM.
Prof. Osofsky then moved that, under the exception described at the end
of Article X, Section l, of the Bylaws, the following resolution be offered for
the agenda of the Business Meeting of 24 January l975:
Be it resolved that the American Mathematical Society will not
cooperate with UNESCO until the exclusion of Israel from regional
groupings will be rescinded.
On a motion from Prof. Brown, the procedural resolution was tabled.
Prof. Gray moved that under the same procedure the following resolution
be offered:
This meeting declares itself in favor of unconditional amnesty for
war resistors.
On a motion from Prof. Kirby the procedural resolution was tabled.
Prof. Lorch moved that two listings in the publication EMPLOYMENT
INFORMATION FOR MATHEMATICIANS, one for a position in Rhodesia and the other
for a position in Chile, not be republished in any future issue. (Reference
EIM, December l974, Page 23). A motion was passed to divide the issue. The
motion with respect to Rhodesia took the form that neither the advertisement
of a position in Rhodesia already cited, nor advertisements of other positions
at universities in Rhodesia be printed in EIM. A motion by Prof. Gillman to
table the resolution was settled by a roll call vote, yielding l5 9/l0's
votes in favor and ll l/l0 opposed.
While the arithmetic operations on the preceding resolutions were being
completed and before the result was announced, a similar resolution, with
"Rhodesia" replaced by "Chile" was considered. A motion by Prof. Weinberger
to table the motion failed. Then the main motion failed.
With Prof. Milnor in the chair, Prof. Bers reported on the state of the
Russian mathematician Leonid Plyushch. He moved that the Council direct the
President, in case no satisfactory answer is received to the recently written
attached letter from the Secretary to the Russian Ambassador, to write another
letter of inquiry. The motion was passed.
Prof. Davis moved that the Council instruct the Secretary to publish in
the NOTICES an exchange of correspondence between the Secretary, the Chilean
Ambassador, and others concerning Prof. Galo Gomes. The motion passed. At
the request of Prof. Osofsky it was agreed that a translation of the portions
in Spanish would be included in the published material.
With President Bers again in the chair, the Council considered a piece
of unfinished business of the journal CURRENT MATHEMATICAL PUBLICATIONS,
described in the following quotation from the minutes of the Executive
Committee and the Board of Trustees of December 7-8, 1974:
At the June l974 joint meeting, the EC/BT took no action on a
recommendation by the CCMJ/CMP Editorial Committee that "..the
Council's decision...to authorize a semi-annual author index be
implemented beginning with the first half of l974. If possible,
this should include the first five issues handled at the Providence
office under the old format." On July 24, the chairman of the BT
conducted a mail ballot on this question, which resulted in a
decision to defer action to the December meeting. It now appears
that, if the index were to be published now, it would be in a
different format than that originally considered by the Council,
and would be more expensive (approximately $3,500 per year.) It
was pointed out that the six-month MR volume indexes have author
indexes of papers reviewed in those issues; however, these
generally appear more than two years after the original paper
appears. In view of these facts, the EC/BT asked that the Council
be apprised of these new developments, and asked to reconsider the
the question at its January l975 meeting.
Lowell Schoenfeld, Chairman of the Editorial Committee of CMP, and D.J. Lewis,
Chairman of the Mathematical Reviews Editorial Committee, commented on the
situation, the latter from the point of view of the impact of the work on the
production of MR. The Council then passed a motion to reconfirm their previous
position authorizing a semi-annual author index of CMP, beginning with and
including the issues of the predecessor, CONTENTS OF CONTEMPORARY MATHEMATICAL
JOURNALS, from the beginning of l974.
The Midwest Category Seminar applied to the Conference Board of the
Mathematical Sciences for affiliate membership. There are two attachments,
namely the letter of application, in which the organization is described, and
a letter from the Chairman of the CBMS describing the procedure. The Council
agreed to accept the MCS for affiliate membership in CBMS.
On a motion by Prof. Gray, the Council requested the Committee on
Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Employment Security to present a status report
at the Council meeting of April 1975.
Prof. Leonard Gillman presented orally the report of the Committee to
Monitor Problems in Communication. The first recommendation was that abstracts
of papers presented by title not be sent to Associate Secretaries for critical
review but be handled including rejecting of totally unacceptable ones in the
Providence office. Prof. Pitcher expressed his confidence in the operation of
the Providence office, but stated his position that this kind of professional
judgement was not suitable for assignment to the Providence office. The
President ultimately ruled that it was the sense of the meeting that a decision
on such a point should be made by the Associate Secretaries.
Prof. Gillman stated that the Committee recommended that Prof.
Schoenfeld be reappointed to a position of liaison with the Library of
Congress. A motion to that effect was passed.
The Committee further recommended that the Providence office make a
detailed study of the financial feasibility of publishing a classified
cumulative review volume in differential geometry and that, if it appear
feasible, Michael Spivak be asked to be editor. A motion approving the recom-
mendation was passed. It was understood as a recommendation to the Trustees.
The Secretary noted the difficulty sometimes experienced by the
Associate Secretaries in obtaining abstracts of 20 minute papers, particularly
invited papers, and offered the following resolution:
The Council records its position that an individual who presents
a 20 minute paper at a meeting of the Society, either by contributing
it or by invitation, shall present an acceptable abstract for
publication in the NOTICES by the date of the published deadline for
receipt of abstracts for that meeting. As with contributed 10 minute
papers, the Associate Secretary will ordinarily not schedule a 20
minutes paper for which no abstract is at hand
The Council approved the resolution, requesting that it received general
circulation by publication.
Professors Paul Bateman and Cathleen Morawetz requested that the
attached proposal from Prof. Mary Gray be brought before the Council. It
requested that the Society express interest to the Teachers Insurance and
Annuity Association in a plan for equal monthly benefits to men and women with
the same employment records and ask to be kept informed about it. Reference
may be made to attachment 7 to the minutes of the EC/BT of December 7-8, 1974.
There was discussion about whether the proposal was for a request for
information or for a position favoring equal monthly benefits. There was
discussion about whether equal monthly benefits was equitable. A motion was
passed instructing the Secretary to request information from TIAA about benefit
plans, including equal monthly benefits, pointing out that the request does not
constitute an opinion of the Society for or against the present benefit
structure.
A motion by Prof. Gray that election ballots be sent first class mail
was defeated.
The question of nomination by petition for the offices of President
Elect and Trustee was raised a second time. The Council requested the
Committee on Committees to take a position on the matter and to report it to
the Council at the meeting of 1975.
Dissatisfaction was expressed over the timetable used for the straw
ballot and the election of members of the EC, particularly over the compression
of the schedule that sometimes leaves little time for return of straw ballots.
There were a number of items of information received without other
formal action by the Council.
The minutes of the EC and the BT of December 7-8, 1974 are attached for
information.
The Council had requested the American Association for the Advancement
of Science to endorse a resolution of the Council urging the National Science
Foundation to reinstitute its post-doctoral fellowship program. The AAAS
Committee on Council Affairs responded by introducing into its Council a
resolution of its own to exactly the same effect. A letter is attached.
The report of the Tellers of the election of 1974 is attached for
information. A list of the Council and BT as constituted on January l, 1975 is
attached for information.
The MAA wished to have a panel discussion on problems of accreditation
of mathematics programs at the joint meeting in Kalamazoo in August 1975.
Accreditation is a recurring problem with both the Association and the Society.
The Secretary noted that the Associate Secretary is willing to have joint
sponsorship by the Society and that the Secretary is willing also. The time
slot will probably be in traditional MAA time.
A nominating committee consisting of Paul R. Halmos and Cathleen S.
Morawetz nominated four persons for two positions on the EC of the Council,
namely:
W. Wistar Comfort
Charles W. Curtis
Jacob T. Schwartz
Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea
There were 44 ballots representing 27 votes, counted "by fractions". There
were write-in votes and not all voters made two selections. Bartle voted as
a member of the Surveys Editorial Committee and Halmos as a member of the
BULLETIN Editorial Committee. The results were as follows:
Schwartz l5 ll/12
Curtis l5 l/6
Tulcea 8 1/3
Comfort 7 1/4
Mary Gray 2 1/6
Lee Lorch 2
D. J. Lewis l
The Nominating Committee for l975 consists of:
Frederick W. Gehring, Chairman
Joseph J. Kohn
Kevin M. McCrimmon
Mary E. Rudin
John V. Wehausen
There is an ad hoc Committee on Committees, consisting of:
Jonathan L. Alperin
Phyllis J. Cassidy
Chandler Davis
F. Reese Harvey
Nathan Jacobson
P. Emery Thomas, Chairman
Karen Uhlenbeck
J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr.
The Council received the attached report from the Executive Director
on Author Prepared Camera Copy for Proceedings Volumes.
The Council adjourned at l0:00 PM.
Everett Pitcher, Secretary
January 22, 1975
