| The International Mathematical Union declared the year 2000
to be World Mathematical Year and in response, the Fields Institute
organized a symposium, "The Legacy of John Charles Fields" - a
three-day meeting, June 7 - 9, featuring nine lectures by Fields
medallists, two historical lectures, a panel discussion on the
future of mathematics and a well-attended banquet. As well as
a tribute to J. C. Fields, the symposium was part of a larger
celebration of Canadian mathematics, preceded by the first MITACS
Annual General Meeting and followed by Math 2000 at McMaster University.
Sir Michael Atiyah gave the opening lecture of the symposium
to a packed auditorium with over 400 people on the campus of the
University of Toronto. His talk, entitled "Mathematics in the
20th Century" proved to be quite provocative and the topic of
much debate throughout the three days. On the evening of the 7th,
a panel discussion on the future of mathematics was moderated
by Richard Kane and consisted of Jim Arthur, Michael Atiyah, Alan
Baker, Richard Borcherds, Tim Gowers, Lisa Jeffrey, Cathleen Morawetz,
Stephen Smale and Efim Zelmanov. The discussion was lively and
topics ranged from the amount to which physics would continue
to inform mathematics to the degree to which computers will one
day be able to "do" mathematics.
On the 8th and 9th, the symposium moved to the Royal Ontario
Museum and nearly 300 people were in attendance. Here is a list
of the talks that were given:
| Tom Archibald (Acadia) |
J.C. Fields: the research ideal in mathematics
and in the organization of science |
| Alan Baker (Cambridge) |
Diophantine Analysis and Transcendence Theory:
the way forward |
| Richard Borcherds (Berkeley) |
Automorphic Forms |
| Alain Connes (IHES) |
Renormalization and the Riemann-Hilbert Problem |
| Timothy Gowers (Cambridge) |
Combinatorics in the Service of Mathematics |
| Vaughan Jones (Berkeley) |
Planar Algebras: between dimensions two, three
and infinity |
| Maxim Kontsevich, (IHES) |
Limits of Complex Structures |
| John Milnor (Stony Brook) |
Complex Systems: the role of mathematics |
| Michael Monastyrsky |
Trends in Modern Mathematics and the Fields
Medals |
| Stephen Smale (Hong Kong) |
The Mathematics of Theories of Learning and
Intelligence |
On the evening of the 8th, a banquet was held at Hart House.
Sir Michael Atiyah spoke on "Mathematics as Architecture". The
banquet was sponsored by the Bank of Montreal, the Bank of Nova
Scotia, Bettermarkets.com, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,
Centre de recherches mathématiques, McMaster University, Nortel
Networks, the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences,
the Royal Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank, the University of Toronto
and the University of Waterloo. The meeting was also sponsored
by the Canadian Mathematical Society, the Canadian Applied and
Industrial Mathematics Society, the Connaught Foundation, MITACS
and the Royal Society of Canada.
The symposium was organized by J. Arthur, (Toronto), J. Chadam,
(Pittsburgh), D. Dawson, (Fields), George Elliott, Chair (Toronto),
P. Fillmore (Dalhousie), N. Ghoussoub, (UBC), B. Hart, (McMaster)
B. Hodgson, (Laval), J. Hurtubise, (McGill), J. Marsden, (Caltech),
C. Morawetz, (Courant), C. Riehm, (McMaster), L. Vinet, (McGill)
All 11 lectures and the panel discussion were filmed and
may be purchased by contacting inquiries<at>fields.utoronto.ca
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