SIAM/DS `Snowbird' conference 2011: formal report

Some figures from the `Snowbird' conference, and summaries of SIAM's conference survey and the DSWeb board meeting.
What are your thoughts on the future of this conference?

Hamiltonian Dynamics and Celestial Mechanics: A Conference in Honor of Ken Meyer in his 75th Year

From May 30 to June 3, 2011 a special conference on Hamiltonian dynamics and celestial mechanics was held in Castro Urdiales, Spain, in honor of Professor Kenneth R. Meyer. H.S. Dumas reports.

A Brief Biographical Sketch of Ken Meyer

Based on recent conversations with Ken Meyer, H.S. Dumas gives `the briefest possible' outline of Ken Meyer's academic life, followed by a chronological survey of some of the best and most representative parts of his work.

SIAM/DS `Snowbird' conference 2011: the prize winners

The Crawford prize, Jürgen Moser lecture, and red sock poster awards.

Reactions to "Edelspam"

In our first Editorial, Lennaert van Veen brought up the issue of academic phishing, bogus conferences, pushy publishers and other highly targeted spam we face in our profession. In particular, ICIAM TV was mentioned as an example. Tony Harkin of the Rochester Institute of Technology comments.

Massively Multiplayer Mathematics

Although theorems are frequently named after a single person, most progress in mathematics is the result of a group effort. Recently several difficult problems in mathematics have been attacked by a collective of mathematicians that have communicated through online blogs. The immediacy of this mode of communication allowed the first proposed problem to be cracked in a surprisingly short time. Will this remain an isolated approach, or can we expect that hard mathematical problems will be regularly crowdsourced in the future?

Crawford prize winners revisited: Dwight Barkley

The Crawford prize is awarded biannually since 2001 at the `Snowbird' conferences by the SIAM activity group on dynamical systems for recent outstanding work on a topic in nonlinear science. In a series of articles we invite the winners to write about their mathematical biography, their work, and what they consider important problems in the field of applied dynamical system. This article is the contribution of the Dwight Barkley, the prize winner from 2005.

Reactions to The end of theory?

In the January, 2011 issue of DSWeb, Krešo Josić discussed claims that software is able to autonomously generate scientific theories in The end of theory?.
Tony Harkin and Siemion Faitlowicz commented.

Books available for review

We have twenty books in stock (on the shelf of our book reviews editor) ready to be sent for your review. If you would like to review one or more of these titles, please send an e-mail to the book reviews editor. We will send you a complimentary copy.

We are sad to announce that Charles Morgan, editor of the Book Reviews section, has to resign in order to tend to his duties as the Department Chair of Mathematics at Lock Haven University. We thank him for his valuable contribution to the magazine. Also, we invite expressions of interest to take over from him. Please contact Jens Rademacher with inquiries.