June 7th – 11th, 1993
Warsaw, Poland

BRIEF REPORT

The meeting was attended by about 60 participants from 16 European countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine. Mary Gray from the USA came as a representative of the Association for Women in Mathematics, of which she is one of the founding members. The main organiser of the meeting was Anna Romanowska of the Technical University, Warsaw.

1. Mathematical Programme

There were mathematical talks by

• Danuta Preworska-Rolewicz (Warsaw): “Differential calculus as calculus”;
• Janina Kotus (Warsaw): “Fractals arising in holomorphic dynamical systems”;
• Viviane Baladi (Lyon): “Some recent results on random perturbations of dynamical sys- tems”;
• Krystyna Kuperberg (Auburn, Florida): “The recent revival of continuum theory”;
• Ina Kersten (Bielefeld): “Linear algebraic groups”,
• Zofia Adamowicz (Warsaw): “On real closed fields”.

There was also a poster session in which participants presented aspects of their work.

2. General Discussions

As decided at the previous EWM meeting, the non-mathematical theme was Creativity, organised by Coby Geijsel. There were two talks:

Coby Geijsel (Amsterdam): “Images of creativity”

Karin Kwast (Amsterdam): “Creativity, a case study”

These were followed by discussions in small groups. Other activities were a report on the Round Table on “Women in Mathematics” which took place at the European Mathematical Congress in Paris 1992; a talk by Mary Gray on the history, aims and activities of the AWM. and one by Krystyna Kuperberg, a Polish mathematician who has settled in the USA, comparing the academic environment for women mathematicians in Poland, Sweden and the USA. There was also a discussion on the situation of women mathematicians in the former socialistic countries. Moreover the programme included a talk by Vassiliki Farmaki (Athens): “Women mathematicians in Ancient Greece”, and a talk by Magdalena Jaroszewska (Poznan): “Olga Taudsky-Todd”.

3. Organisation of EWM and the General Assembly

Following the decision in Luminy to go forward with the establishment of EWM as a legal body, much work had been done, mainly by Caroline Series and by Marjatta Näätänen and Riitta Ulmanen of Helsinki in consultation with Finnish lawyers, on preparing a draft of the statutes. This draft was presented to the general assembly and, following detailed discussion, the essentials were accepted with some changes.

There will be two categories of membership, supporting members and full members. Supporting members can come to meetings but not vote, and men can only join as supporting members. The suggestion of this formulation was made by Mary Gray, who in addition to her long association with AWM is a lawyer as well as a mathematician.

The legalisation committee was asked to prepare a final version of the statutes and the legalisation was completed by December 2nd of 1993. The legal seat of EWM will be in Helsinki in Finland where Riitta Ulmanen as the secretary will have an office for EWM at the Department of Mathematics at University of Helsinki.

There was considerable discussion on the knotty problem of membership fees and how to collect them. It was decided to start charging membership fees from 1994 after legalisation is complete with 3 rates (low: 1 ECU, standard: 20 ECU, high: 50 ECU) (1 ECU equals approximately 1 US dollar). The regional co-ordinators should be responsible for collecting the money and sending it (or part of it) to a general account.

The general assembly also appointed new co-ordinators, convenors and standing committee, for details see the names and committees list. The new convenor of the standing committee is Anna Romanowska and the international co-ordinators are Capi Corrales (west), Marketa Novak (central), Inna Berezowskaya and Marie Demlova (east).

There will be some joint activity of AWM and EWM at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, August 1994. This is being organised by Cora Sadosky, the president of AWM, and Eva Bayer. Since the Warsaw meeting it has been decided that the next EWM meeting will be planned to take place in Madrid in July 1995 with Mariemi Alonso (Madrid), Capi Corrales (Madrid) and Rosa Maria Miro (Barcelona) as the main organisers. It is likely that the 1997 meeting can be in Germany.

4. Organising Committees

The Warsaw meeting was organised by the EWM standing committee consisting of

Polyna Agranovich (Ukraine), Mariemi Alonso (Spain), Eva Bayer (France), Bodil Branner (Denmark), Jacqueline Detraz (France), Sandra Hayes (Germany), Magdalena Jaroszewska (Poland), Anna Romanowska (Poland), Barbara Roszkowska (Poland), and Caroline Series (England). The local organising committee consisted of Elzbieta Ferenstein, Irmina Herburt, Felicja Okulicka, Ewa Pawelec, Agata Pilitowska, Anna Romanowska, Barbara Roszkowska, and Krystyna Twardowska.

The meeting was financially supported by the Technical University of Warsaw, in particular the Dean of the Department of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics, and by the money left after the third EWM Meeting in Warwick.