Highlights of the Joint Mathematics Meetings Phoenix, Arizona, January 7 - 10, 2004

The 2004 Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA) were held in Phoenix Arizona, January 7-10. There were nearly 5,000 participants--mathematicians, exhibitors, employers, and students--who attended invited addresses, special sessions, mini-courses, the prize ceremony, exhibits, contributed paper sessions, and poster sessions. There were many opportunities for meeting colleagues old and new, at receptions, meetings and informal gatherings.

Below are some of the many highlights:

The Mathematical Sciences Employment Center
2004 Prizes and Awards
A New Kind of Science and the Future of Mathematics - AMS-MAA Invited Address by Stephen Wolfram
Confessions of a Sequence Addict - MAA Invited Address by Neil J.A. Sloane
Mathematics and the Arts
Current Events in Mathematics - AMS Special Session organized by David Eisenbud
The Exhibits
The Mathematical Art Exhibit
Report on the Undergraduate Student Poster Session, by Mario Martelli
AMS Banquet and Membership
CINEMATH: Mathematics and the Silver Screen
Examples of Team Projects That Work - MAA Session on Teaching Operations Research in the Undergraduate Classroom
Who Wants To Be A Mathematician - game for high school students organized by the AMS Public Awareness Office
The Status of the Classification of the Finite Simple Groups - AMS Invited Address by Michael Aschbacher
The Representations of Integers by Quadratic Forms - MAA Invited Address by Manjul Bhargava
AMS Committee on Education Panel
AMS Council Debates Issues

Each year the Employment Center is part of the JMM, but because of updates, we feel that descriptions of past Employment Centers may be more misleading than they are informative. See a description of the Employment Center at the 2013 JMM in San Diego for information on a modern Employment Center.

Although the AMS and MAA co-sponsored the joint meetings, several other organizations also held meetings, sponsored prizes, and hosted sessions: the Association for Symbolic Logic, the Association for Women in Mathematics, the London Mathematical Society, the National Association of Mathematicians, the National Science Foundation, Pi Mu Epsilon, the Rocky Mountain Mathematics Consortium, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Young Mathematicians Network.

We look forward to seeing you at next year's Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta, Georgia, January 5 - 8, 2005.