Table of Contents
Featured Articles and Invitations from the AMS
How the Alternating Sign Matrix Conjecture Was Solved
David Bressoud and James Propp
A curiosity-driven conjecture in combinatorics led to relations among determinants, Young diagrams, plane partitions, and statistical mechanics; and eventually a whole range of conjectures was proved at once in 1996.
The Visualization of Mathematics: Towards a Mathematical Exploratorium
Richard S. Palais
Computer-generated visualizations are now a serious tool in mathematical research. The author describes needs in this area that are not met by commercial software, and he projects where the subject of mathematical visualization is headed.