Joint Meeting of the AMS and New Zealand Mathematical Society

The first joint meeting of the AMS and the New Zealand Mathematical Society (NZMS) was held at the Victoria University of Wellington, December 12-15, 2007. Over 300 mathematicians attended. The scientific program, organized by representatives of both societies, included plenary speakers from each society. The invited speakers were:

• Marston Conder, University of Auckland, Chirality.
• Rodney G. Downey, Victoria University of Wellington, Practical FPT and foundations of kernelization.
• Michael H. Freedman, Microsoft Research, Physically motivated questions in topology: Manifold pairings.
• Bruce J. Kleiner, Yale University, Bilipschitz embedding in Banach spaces.
• Gaven J. Martin, Massey University, Curvature and dynamics.
• Assaf Naor, Microsoft Research/Courant Institute, The story of the sparsest cut problem.
• Theodore A. Slaman, University of California Berkeley, Effective randomness and continuous measures.
• Matthew J. Visser, Victoria University of Wellington, Emergent spacetimes, rainbow geometries, and pseudo-Finsler geometries.

There were 15 special sessions on the program. The NZMS and local organizers hosted social events in addition to providing the venue for the meeting. The website maintained by the local organizers includes the entire program, abstracts of talks, and more photographs from the opening ceremony.

Prof. Neil Quigley (Deputy Vice Chancellor Research at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), William McCormick (U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand), Peter Donelan (Prof. of Mathematics, Victoria University of Wellington and meeting organizer), Dr. Di McCarthy (Royal Society of New Zealand).

Ginny Whatarau, Administration, Victoria University of Wellington, at the registration desk.

Left to right: Vaughan F.R. Jones, Rod Downey, Ruth Charney and Gaven Martin.

Michael H. Freedman, Microsoft, Plenary Speaker.

Photographs courtesy of the Victoria University of Wellington Image Services (Les Maiden photographer).

Report of the 1^st Joint Meeting of the American and New Zealand Mathematical Societies, by Peter Donelan and Matthew Miller, Joint Meeting Conveners ( 33.8 KB)

Since the AMS's first joint international meeting with the London Mathematical Society in 1992, the AMS has co-sponsored 22 meetings with sister societies in their host countries, and upcoming in 2008 are joint meetings Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (June 4-7), and Shanghai, China (December 17-21). International meetings are a valuable addition to the Society's programs that foster contacts and collaborations. See the list of all joint international meetings planned to date.