The reaction to the Park City meeting on Mathematics of Numerical Analysis: Real Number Algorithms which was chaired by Steve Smale and which had around 275 participants was very enthusiastic. At the suggestion of Narendra Karmarkar we decided to try to hold an annual or perhaps biennial meeting entitled Foundations of Computational Mathematics and to form an organization with the same name whose primary purpose will be to hold the meeting. A lunch time meeting of Felipe Cucker, Arieh Iserles, Narendra Karmarkar, Jim Renegar, Mike Shub and Steve Smale asked Mike Shub to act on its behalf.
The first Foundations of Computational Mathematics meeting was held at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Applicada in Rio de Janeiro during the week of 5-12 January, 1997. It consisted of twelve invited lectures and nine workshops.
The Rio de Janeiro meeting provided an opportunity to restructure FoCM in a more organized manner. Thus, the governing body is now the FoCM Council, while the day-to-day affairs of the organisation are managed by the FoCM Executive Committee.
Current FoCM activities include
The next FoCM conference will be held in Summer
1999.
A special semester on Foundations of Computational
Mathematics will be held at the Mathematical Sciences Research
Institute, Berkeley (CA) in August-December 1998. The
subjects of the MSRI special semester are
A second special semester on Foundations of Computational
Mathematics is currently in advanced stages of
preparation. We expect that it will be held in Asia or Europe,
perhaps in the year 2000, and comprise the following subjects:
We are currently negotiating with a leading publisher a
framework for FoCM publishing.
The special semester will be advertised soon by MSRI and we
encourage anybody interested in participating to await the MSRI
advert and read it carefully first.
According to a decision at an open meeting during the FoCM'97 conference, we have established a small committee to debate the future aims, structure and decision-making procedures of FoCM. The committee comprises of Lenore Blum (convener), Stefan Heinrich, Herb Keller, Mike Shub and Mike Todd.
In an advanced stage of its deliberations, the committee plans to consult widely with the broad FoCM community. This procedure will be advertised, when relevant, on the FoCM home page.