AGRESEARCH
Major activity centred around the ANZIAM'96 conference at Masterton in February. AgResearch sponsored a plenary speaker, Odo Diekmann, who is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Utrecht. Odo's paper entitled "Physiologically structured populations: modelling and analysis" showed how useful results could be obtained from integral equations. He remarked later that biologists appear to have less difficulty than applied mathematicians when he talks about measures! Other AgResearch contributions to ANZIAM'96 were:
Kao & Smith: "A new approach to modelling cell receptor aggregation phenomena through Gibbs and reaction ensemble simulations".
Kopetschny, Lambert, Louie, Springett & Wake: "Dynamical systems model of earthworms and litter".
Louie: "A continuum mechanics approach to determining the cellular velocity field within a wool follicle".
Metherell, Woodward & McCall: "Modelling phosphorus fertiliser requirements for grazed pastures".
Pleasants, McCall & Wake: "Modelling pasture mass through time with stochastic differential equations".
Roberts: "Possums, parasites and population dynamics".
Saha & Sarbadhikar: "Immune system functions - a simple mathematical approach".
Vetharaniam, McCall & Garrick: "Growth theory for an animal".
Woodward: "Dynamical systems modelling of grass pasture and grazing".
Following ANZIAM'96 Odo Diekmann visited AgResearch at Wallaceville and Whatawhata, as well as Auckland University. The Dutch invasion at Wallaceville continued with a two-week visit in March from Hans Heesterbeek from the Agricultural Mathematics Group at Wageningen, a visit made possible by a Prince and Princess of Wales Science Award. Hans spent the time on joint work with Mick Roberts, and gave a seminar "The Mystical Significance of Arnold" which detailed the history, current state and outstanding problems in mathematical epidemiology.
UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICAL & INFORMATION SCIENCES
The SMIS has survived the transition to semesters, despite significant hiccups in the implementation of the computer-based enrolment process.
No reliable counts of student enrolments are yet available.
A cricket match was held between the Departments of Mathematics and of Computer Science. The outcome was: 1 bruised nose, 1 broken spectacles and 1 fractured forearm, all scored by Ivan Reilly.
A Forum for Ideas on Teaching was held, chaired by Ivan Reilly, with contributions by Marston Conder, Chris Wild, Jill Ellis, Bill Barton, Greg Oates and Philip Sharp.
The Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science was founded in 1995 as a joint venture of the Universities of Auckland and of Waikato, with Cris Calude and Douglas Bridges as co-directors. It will host its first conference at the University of Auckland on 1996 December 9-13.
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
John Hosking has been promoted over the bar in the Senior Lecturer scale. Peter Fenwick has returned from a year's leave, which he spent at several universities in California, Minnesota and Perth.
Professor Charlie Colbourne is visiting from the University of Waterloo (Ontario) until the end of June.
Robert Sheehan has won a Distinguished Teaching Award from the Faculty of Science for 1996. Paul Qualtrough has been awarded one of 14 travel grants under the Young Scientists' Fund of the Royal Society of NZ.
Thirteen students are now enrolled for PhD
Seminars
Dr T. Ahrndt, Dr R. Riederer & Dr J.Teiwes (Universität der Bundeswehr Munich), "Computer systems for diagnosis and therapy of speech disorders".
John Cleary (Waikato University), "Deductive programming: a pure approach to logic programming".
Professor Lindsay Groves (VUW), "Deriving programs by combining and adapting refinement scripts".
Dr Mark Titchener (Tamaki campus), "Seeding trees from a coded message".
Dr Alan Creak & Robert Sheehan (University of Auckland), "An operating systems course".
Dr Xiaosong Li (University of Auckland), "Extensions to the PUIST User Interface Specification Tool".
Nickee Sanders (University of Auckland), "Automated testing using executable formal specifications".
Dr Jeremy Gibbons (University of Auckland), "Tracing lazy functional languages".
Howard Wong-Toi (Cadence Berkeley Labs), "HyTech: a symbolic model checker for hybrid systems".
Dr Dale Miller (University of Pennsylvania), "Observations about using logic as a specification language".
Professor Karl Svozil (Technical University of Vienna) "Recent developments in quantum mechanics: `Mindboggling' experiments, quantum information theory and quantum computing".
Dr Rick Mugridge (University of Auckland), "Java and the Web".
Professor Cristian Calude (University of Auckland), "Is computer science a science?".
Dr John Hamer (University of Auckland), "The tyranny of names".
DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE
Mike O'Sullivan has handed over the reins of HOD to David Ryan. Andrew Mason and Mikael Ronnquist, previously holding limited-term Lectureships, have now been appointed to permanent positions. Andy Philpott has been promoted to Associate Professor. Ian Collins has returned from leave. We are deeply saddened by the loss of his wife, Annette. Peter Hunter has departed on leave, to UCSD and later to Europe.
Recent seminars have included the following:
Dr Gerd Infanger (Stanford University) "Planning under uncertainty - solving large scale stochastic linear programs".
Professor Klaus Neumann (U. Karslruhe) "Heuristics and applications for resource-constrained project scheduling with minimal and maximal time lags".
Professor Ian Clucki (U. Salford) "Real time control of urban drainage using weather radar"
Professor Bruce Bare (University of Washington) "Personal experiences in the development of O.R. techniques to forestry in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.A."
Professor C.A. Knox Lovell (U. Georgia) "The cost of air pollution abatement in Thailand".
Dr Lawrence Hogben "50 years of Operational Research".
Dr J. Tennant-Smith (formerly at UMIST) "Probability fallacies in DNA-profile evidence at criminal trials".
Professor Goerge Nemhauser (Georgia Inst. Tech.) "Optimization problems in airline scheduling", and "Branch and price: solving huge integer programs by column generation".
Professor Andres Weintraub (U. Chile) "Operational research techniques in forest management".
Andrew Goldie (D.E.S.) "Generation of airline pilot tours of duty using optimization".
Dr Rod Lambert (Massey University) "Using elastica theory to study a biological membrane".
Dr Andrew Pullan (D.E.S.) "The forward and inverse problems of electrocardiology".
Dr Andrew Mason (D.E.S) "Staff planning at Auckland International Airport".
A/Professor Don Nield (D.E.S) "Modelling fluid flow in a porous medium".
Michael O'Sullivan (Jr.) (D.E.S.) "Scheduling and loading of a transportation fleet".
A/Professor Mike O'Sullivan (D.E.S.) "Is Mururoa Atoll leaking?".
Professor A. Antamoshkin (Siberian Aerospace Academy, Krasnoyarsk) "Modelling of the control systems design".
Don Nield
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Marston Conder has become the Head of Department, from 1995 December 1. He took up a Claude McCarthy Fellowship in December 1995, to travel to Spain for joint research with colleagues at the UNED in Madrid; and to Singapore, where he was a plenary speaker at the First Asian Technology Conference in Mathematics.
Mavina Vamanamurthy had been Acting Head of Department for 18 months. On his last night as HoD, most members of the Department attended a banquet in his honour, held at Freiya's Restaurant in Ponsonby. After that, Vaman took 2 months holiday in India.
John Butcher and Marston Conder have been appointed to the Marsden Fund advisory panel for the Mathematical & Information Sciences. Marston Conder is convenor of that panel, and is a member of the Marsden Fund Committee for 1996.
Both Lynne Gilmore and Alastair, at Tamaki Campus, have been promoted within the Senior Tutor scale.
Mark Wilson has been awarded a New Zealand Science & Technology Postdoctoral Fellowship, for 2 years.
Colin Fox went to Scott Base in November, to continue his research on ice shelves in the Ross Sea. After that he visited Clarkson University (Potsdam, New York), to continue research with John Dempsey.
John Butcher is on leave, at several universities in Europe and North America. Norm Levenberg is on leave for 18 months. Bruce Calvert is on leave at Rutgers University, and Vivien Kirk is on leave. Peter Lorimer is on leave without pay, until the end of the first semester.
Professor Bob Russell, from Simon Fraser University in Canada, is visiting the Applied & Computational Mathematics Unit, for the first semester. He is teaching a Masters paper 445.770 on Advanced Numerical Analysis.
Professor Dan Archdeacon from the University of Vermont (USA) is visiting the Mathematics Department until April 6. He is based at the Tamaki Campus but will be involved in teaching part of 445.225 Discrete Mathematics on the City Campus. Dr Aisling McCluskey (University College Galway) is visiting Ivan Reilly and other topologists until April.
The book "The Foundations of Topological Graph Theory" by Paul Bonnington and Charles Little, published by Springer-Verlag, was launched at a ceremony at Tamaki Campus in October 1995.
The Department now has more than 25 students currently enrolled for PhDs. Chris Heath, Rowan Killip, John MacCormick and Rachel Weir have been awarded University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships; and Emily Lane has been awarded a University of Auckland Masters Scholarship.
Graeme Wake organized ANZIAM `96, the 32nd Australasian Applied Mathematics Conference, which was held at Masterton on February 4th to 8th. Over 170 mathematicians came to Masterton from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Brunei, Japan, USA, Canada, Sweden, Netherlands and England.
The papers presented by members of this Department were:
Kumar Vetharaniam (with D G McCall & D J Garrick), "Growth theory for an animal".
Graeme Wake, "Predation thresholds for survival of endangered species: the New Zealand kiwi", and
Simon Watt & Graeme Wake on "Uncertainty in epidemic models".
Seminars
Professor Ron Dunkley (University of Waterloo), "Good output requires good input".
Liz Stone (Auckland College of Education)
"Assessment in secondary school mathematics: A British perspective".
John MacCormick (University of Auckland), "Decomposing a Lie algebra".
Professor Douglas Munn (University of Glasgow), "Special involutions",
Dr Andy Begg (University of Waikato), "Mathematics Curriculum: looking ahead".
Dr Christine Mynhardt (University of South Australia), _ .
Professor E.J.Cockayne, (University of Victoria BC), "Non-redundant queens on an n x n chessboard".
Dr Colin Fox (University of Auckland), "Average propagation of sound".
Dr Mikael Ronnquist (Engineering Science), "Optimisation in forestry: log cutting".
Dr Alex McNabb (Tamaki campus), "Membrane diffusion and flux responses".
Dr David G. H. Tan (University of Cambridge),"Fluids research: spacecraft destabilisation and atmospheric modelling".
Professor John Howie (University of St Andrews),
"The place of mathematics in education: recent initiatives in Scotland" and "Infinite semigroups of transformations".
Professor Dan Archdeacon (University of Vermont), "Sewing ribbons on graphs in space".
Dr Mark Wilson (University of Auckland), "Crossed products, old and new".
DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
Dr Karla Ballman, who has been a Lecturer at the Tamaki Campus, has resigned.
Both Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka have been promoted to Senior Lecturer.
Alastair Scott went on short leave to Berkeley. Lakhdar Aggoun has gone on leave to Saudi Arabia for a year.
Chris Triggs attended a Workshop on BUGS - (Bayesian inference Using Gibbs Sampling), Queensland Univ Technology, Brisbane, Dec 4-7, 1995.
Robert Gentleman was on a trip from 18 of Nov to 18 of Dec. He was at the Seattle Biostatistics Conference (21-23 Nov). Then he visited at UBC (Vancouver), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), University of Heidelberg, University of Augsburg (both in Germany), ETH in Zürich and The American University in Cairo (Egypt). James Curran attended the National Forensic Science Technology Center Workshop - St. Petersburg, Florida.
Seven students are now enrolled for PhD. Gita Mishra has completed her PhD and has been appointed to a Lectureship at the University of Newcastle.
Seminars
Professor Leonard L. Scott (University of Virginia), "High weight theory, old and new".
Dr Phil Pollett (University of Queensland), "Quasistationary distributions for Markovian models".
Dr David Balding (Queen Mary and Westfield College, London), "Assessing genetic variability".
Michele Haynes (Queensland University of Technology), "Robustness of ranking and selection rules using generalised g-and-k distributions".
Garry J. Tee
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UNIVERSITY OF CANTERBURY
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
Kaikoura was the setting for an international biomathematics conference in March 3-7. The meeting, called "Kaikoura '96" was organized by Mike Steel (in collaboration with colleagues at Massey University) and attracted about 32 participants, many from the US/Germany/Japan (and who mostly paid their own way). They included Professor Masami Hasegawa, a leading mathematical geneticist in Japan and David Swofford from the Smithsonian Institute, whose "PAUP" program is the most widely used package for reconstructing evolutionary trees. Others included Anthony Edwards, from Cambridge, who pioneered statistical approaches to phylogenetics in the 1960's and whose book "Likelihood" is a classic statistical text, and Scott Baker, who recently achieved notoriety when he identified varieties of endangered whale species in sushi and other seafood on sale in Tokyo.
A number of mathematicians also attended, including Professor Mike Hendy from Massey University, and Dr Daniel Huson, a departmental visitor from Universitat Bielefeld, who is working with Mike Steel for three months. Postgraduate students David Bryant, Isaac Freeman and Chris Tuffley also attended the conference. The meeting was held in the University's marine field station, which is spectacularly sited on the north-facing side of the penninsula, and participants had time to engage in whale watching, swimming with dolphins, and hiking up Mt Fyffe.
Seminars
Professor Curt Lindner, Auburn University, "How to embed a Partial Steiner triple system" and "Universal algebra and graph theory go hand in hand".
Professor Anne Street, University of Queensland, "Trades and defining sets" and "A few more subsets of Latin squares".
Dr Jonas Lundstedt, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm "Signal Restoration and Parameter Reconstruction on Non-uniform Transmission Lines".
Professor John Ll. Morris, University of Dundee, "Splitting strategies in the solution of differential equations ".
Professor Rainer Loewen, University. of Braunschweig "Structures of the real projective plane".
Dr Frank Lad and Dr Reg Dunlop, "Learning about the pulse width modulation of a square wave from digital measurements of its on and off components".
Dr Burkard Polster, University of Adelaide, "Integrating topological geometries"
Rick Beatson
As we went to press we received the sad news that Derrick Breach, a long-time member of the Department, died on Saturday April 27.
Editor
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MASSEY UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Staff update:
Robert McKibbin took up the Chair of Applied Mathematics in the Department at the beginning of February.
We welcome Dr Igor Boglaev, who has taken up a two-year lectureship. Dr Marijcke Vlieg, a
Massey Mathematics PhD graduate and temporary lecturer, has taken up a one-year lecturing position for 1996. Dr Francis Thio, currently an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Miami, will join the Department as a Senior Lecturer at the Albany campus in June; this will bring the number of staff there to four.
Graduate Assistants for this year include Nicholas Allsop, Mary Day, Catherine Rivers, Anton Raviraj Selvaratnam, Thomasin Smith, Margaret Walshaw and Fiona Wharton.
Postdoctoral Fellows & Visitors:
After a period of 3 months working here with Mike Hendy, Dr Daniel Huson from the University of Bielefeld moved on to the University of Canterbury, but by now is homeward bound. Dr Anthony Edwards, Reader in Biometrics at Cambridge University, UK, spent about 2 months here early in the year, continuing collaborative research with Mike Hendy.
Dr Yuji Kamoi left us for Japan after a year with Wolfgang Vogel. Dr Liam O'Carroll from the University of Edinburgh visited and worked with Wolfgang for about a month on a common research topic of Intersection Theory.
Briefer visits have been paid by Dr Rod Gentry (University of Guelph), Dan Hayba (US Geological Survey) and Dr Dan Archdeacon (University of Vermont), all of whom contributed talks and discussions about their current research work.
Staff travel/conferences:
Both Mike Hendy and Sören Perrey presented papers at "Kaikoura `96", an international workshop attended by mathematicians, computer scientists and biologists researching phylogenetic analysis techniques. The 30 participants, about half from overseas, spent 5 days at the University of Canterbury's Marine Research Facility at Kaikoura, a perfect retreat for research discussion.
Glenda Anthony presented a paper "Factors affecting Mathematics students' strategic learning behaviours" in the Mathematics Education Stream Programme of the 17th annual conference of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education held here at Massey during December.
Wolfgang Vogel has received two prestigious invitations. The Faculty of Mathematics at Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany) has invited him to give a series of lectures to MSc and PhD students belonging to the "Graduiertenkolleg"; he will realize the course in block-teaching mode during his visit to the Max-Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn while on overseas leave during the period May-August later this year. He was also an invited speaker in a workshop held at UC Berkeley in March. Professor Vogel is now a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Mathematical Society Lecture Series published by Cambridge University Press.
Scholars:
Congratulations to Nicholas Allsop, Ian Beale and Steven Johnston, all of whom have been awarded Doctoral Scholarships, and to Tammy Smith who has been awarded a Masterate Scholarship. David Sherriff and Steven Roderick are Massey Scholars in Mathematics for 1996. Nicholas Allsop was a Visiting Scholar at Sydney University for six weeks over the summer.
Teaching:
The introduction of a graduate programme in Mathematics at Albany in 1997 is planned; proposals are now under consideration. Curriculum reviews are continuing within the undergraduate, honours and masters programmes.
The second-year paper 60.204 Differential Equations and Modelling now includes the use of Maple. The software was bought in part using an "Innovation and Excellence in Teaching" grant which Robert McLachlan won last year. He has modified some material he found on the internet which appears to provide an excellent interactive introduction to both Maple and DEs.
Academic Board resolved to require all staff who have not previously supervised a PhD at Massey to attend an induction programme on PhD supervision at Massey before taking up supervisory responsibilities or as soon as possible thereafter.
ANZIAM'96:
A sizeable contingent of staff and postgraduate students from the Department attended ANZIAM `96, the Australia New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics conference in Masterton in February. It was deemed to be a great success by most participants. Robert McKibbin and Adrian Swift were Co-convenor/Secretary and Treasurer respectively .
1996 Mathematics Colloquium update:
Massey University is to host the 1996 Mathematics Colloquium on 1 to 4 July this year. The topic for the Theme Day will be "Mathematical Physics". The invited speakers will be: Paul Callaghan (Physics, Massey), Colin Fox (University of Auckland), Mikhael Gromov (Inst. des Hautes Etudes Sci. - NZMS Lecturer), Jeff Lagaria (AT&T Laboratories), Robert McKibbin (Massey), Ren Potts (University of Adelaide - ANZIAM Lecturer), John Stillwell (Monash University). See elsewhere in this issue for registration details, etc.
Seminars:
Professor Roger Grimshaw (Monash University) was the NZ Mathematical Society Visiting Lecturer for 1995. An applied mathematician, his specialities include fluid mechanics which was the subject of his lectures. We enjoyed his visit and his two talks (see below). He and other visitors contributed to our departmental seminar series which continues to be busy and interesting in its variety.
Our Mathematical Physics Seminar series, run jointly with the Physics Department, is going ahead again during the first semester this year. In addition, a Mathematical Modelling Discussion Group has started; this is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar/workshop which will bring technology and applied science staff and postgraduate students together with our Department's applied mathematicians for sharing of experiences and with a view to inclusion of mathematicians in applied research groups which are involved with modelling.
Seminars
Frances Krsinich (Massey University) "Greek solutions of the three classical problems: Duplicating the Cube, Trisecting the Angle and Squaring the Circle".
Professor Roger Grimshaw (Monash University) "Solitary waves generated by flow interaction with topography", "Interaction of a solitary wave with an external force".
Chris Palliser (Massey University) "Mathematical modelling of heat and mass flow in deep geothermal systems".
Dr Daniel Huson (Bielefeld University, Germany) "The form of an orbifold determines the number of tilings".
Matthew Cole (Massey University) "Mathematical modelling of the cooling of spent anodes in the aluminium smelting industry".
Dr Robert McKibbin (Massey University) "Mathematical modelling: Interdisciplinary conversations".
Professor Willi-Hans Steeb (Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa) "Teaching Mathematics through Object-Oriented Programming with applications to chaotic systems".
Dr Alfred Sneyd (University of Waikato) "Magnetohydrodynamics in industry and astrophysics".
Dr Song Ping Zhu (University of Wollongong) "Selective withdrawal from stratified streams".
Dr Anthony Edwards (Cambridge University) "Venn diagrams old and new".
Dr Francis Thio (Physics, University of Miami) "Plasma materials processing".
Dr Rod Gentry (University of Guelph, Canada) "The kinetics of tissue factor: Aspects of surface-mediated enzyme reactions".
Dr Daniel O. Hayba (US Geological Survey, Reston, USA) "Groundwater flow in magmatic-hydrothermal systems".
Dr Dan Archdeacon (University of Vermont) "Sewing ribbons on graphs in space".
Dr Klaus Neumann (University of Karlsruhe, Germany) "Heuristics and applications for resource-constrained project scheduling with minimal and maximal time lags".
Dr Liam O'Carroll (University of Edinburgh) "On Intersection Theory".
Douglas B. McLeod (San Diego State University) "Setting the standards: NCTM's role in the reform of Mathematics education".
Mathematical Physics Seminar
Dr Robert McLachlan (Massey University) "Computational fluid dynamics".
Mathematical Modelling Discussion Group
Professor Andrew Cleland (Food Technology, Massey University) "Dynamic model use for process improvement - a case study: Reflections on the last 15 years in meat plant refrigeration systems".
Professor John Edwards (University of Sheffield, UK) "On-line optimal control of chemical and separation processes".
Mr Ralf Schlothauer (Process & Environmental Technology, Massey University) "Modelling activity of a biocatalytic reactor system".
Robert McKibbin
DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
At the end of March the principal concern of the Department is the appointment of a new Professor. Dick Brook has been Acting Head since Jeff Hunter's elevation to Dean; he is the one most concerned to see an early outcome to the appointment process.
New arrivals in the Department are Alasdair Noble, an ex-school teacher who is lecturing at Palmerston North for a year; Rohan, from Sri Lanka, a Graduate Assistant, also at Palmerston North; and Thomas Yee, from Auckland University, a part-time lecturer at Albany. On his way to a full time lectureship at Albany from Newcastle-on-Tyne is Paul Cowpertwait. Then we have a number of visitors expected at Palmerston North later in the year: Larry Weldon from Simon Fraser University, Canada; Tom Hassard from the University of Manitoba, Canada; and Chris Theobold from Edinburgh University, Scotland. All these people can be financed because the rest of us teach far more students than we ought.
Paula McMillan was our Secretary even before the Department began, but she has now become Faculty Secretary. Her replacement, Manvir Edwards, is quietly organising Dick and the rest of us in a very pleasant sort of way.
After many years of cheerful assisting around the Department, John Koolaard has moved across the road to Crop and Food Research.
Last year Hugh Morton was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship, from which he has just returned. The news so far is that the snow was depressing, but the research excellent. More will be reported in due course.
As a special biennial treat Palmerston North students visit Statistics New Zealand in Wellington. Unfortunately Howard Edwards at Albany has set new standards by taking Albany students to the casino. Palmerston North would be grateful for ideas on how to compete.
The rather short seminar list suggests that we had little energy left for academic pursuits:
Charles Lawoko (Massey University), "A discussion of a selection of results on contextual classification of hyperspectral data".
Anthony Edwards, (Cambridge University) "The method of minimum Chi-square"
Jenny Edwards, (Massey University) "Statistics packages on the Massey network"
George Seber, (Auckland University), '"Two stage adaptive cluster sampling".
Greg Arnold
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UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
As is usual at this time of year, we have been counting our blessings - also known as students. Our EFTS tally is very close to last year's.
Even before the academic year began, we were cheered by the news that Andrew Lonie, a recent graduate of this department, had been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Andrew's long-term aim is a career in meteorology.
Temporary additions to our staff include two statisticians from the USA. Jim Hartman, from the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio, arrived last May and leaves in April. Philip Dixon, from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia, is here from January to June. Meanwhile, Marti McCracken has extended her stay until June.
We are pleased also to have a prolonged visit by John Rayner, who was a member of this department for many years before moving to the University of Wollongong. John is spending part of his current leave with us.
Another recent visitor was John Stillwell (Monash), who came over for a week in January-February to work on a book with Derek Holton.
The seminar season is only now getting properly under way, but there have been some interesting contributions since the last Newsletter:
Roger Grimshaw (Monash), the 1995 NZMS Visiting Lecturer, on "Solitary waves generated by flow interaction with topography" .
Hugh Best (Science and Research Directorate, Department of Conservation, Wellington), on "Demography of the New Zealand fur seal on the South Island's West Coast" .
Bryan Manly (University of Otago), on "Salmon survival in the Snake River: are mark-recapture methods scientifically sound?" .
Your regular Otago correspondent, Robert Aldred, is on leave through 1996. He has spent the first three months of the year at the Mathematics Institute of the Danish Technical University in Lyngby, where he has been working with Carsten Thomassen on various graph theoretical problems.
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Bram Evans
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
ISOR
Overseas news
Peter Smith is back from leave where he worked at the University of Washington (Seattle) and University of Exeter. He visited and gave talks at AT&T Bell Research Labs (New Jersey), British Telecom Research Labs (Ipswich) and StatSci (Seattle). High points of the leave were coffee and bagels in Seattle and letting off 30 tons of explosive in a quarry. Megan Clark has returned from 6 months leave in Chester, visiting Mary Roundfield. Also visiting Universities in Hertfordshire and Durham, productivity was the theme of her leave.
She has now settled back into Clean Green Wellington with relief.
Book Published
Professor Tony Vignaux and Bernard Robertson jointly published a book on looking at evidence with a probabilistic view. Entitled "Interpreting Evidence - Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom", it was published by Wiley (UK). They scooted over to the UK for a promotional sojourn, which I believe was most successful.
Give Away
John Harper has: Free to a good home as my study is becoming a cluster point or point of accumulation or limit point of such things! (Can anybody explain why we have 3 terms for the same thing?) NZ Maths Magazine vols 5-9. No dates printed on them but they appear to be about 1968-1972.
Overseas Visitors
Jim Zolman (University of Kentucky) and Herman Senter (Clemsom University of South Carolina) have both been here over the summer, Jim was with us for a short time and on his departure he very kindly donated some pottery mugs for our tea room. His wife's hobby was a big plus for ISOR! Herman is here till June, at present he is mountaineering and enjoying the sights of the South Island.
Just passing through Wellington on leave from Waikato, Klaus Neumann (University of Karlsruhe, Germany) dropped in and kindly gave a seminar on "Heuristic and Applications for Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling with Minimal and Maximal Time Lags".
Social
On the social side we held a Christmas Party this year on the 5th floor balconies and Tea Room, but the wind blew, so we spent most of the time indoors. Still every one behaved and no one fell over the balconies. In February we had another successful wine tasting run by Master of Wine, Alistair Gray.
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
Professor John Harper recently returned from eight months research and study leave in UK (Cambridge) and USA (mostly Boulder and Santa Barbara ). While he was overseas he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, in December 1995.
Dr Geoff Whittle has been gadding about again. He attended the South Eastern Conference in Combinatorial Mathematics and Computing, Baton Rouge, Louisiana early this year, and remained for a further two weeks visiting the mathematics department at Louisiana State University.
Irene Pestov, a very active doctoral student, gave a talk at ANZIAM96, the 9th conference presentation for her in the last three years.
Professor Rod Downey doesn't sit still for long either. He has returned from Cornell, and then went to Oberwolfach, Germany, in January, with a side trip to the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
Dr Malcolm Quinn, who completed BSc(Hons) in Mathematics in 1989 and was the top VUW student of his year has now completed a PhD at MIT entitled "A new completely integrable system on the symmetric periodic Toda lattice phase space".
Dr Yde Venema of the Free University of Amsterdam spent Nov-Feb in the Department as a VUW Visiting Fellow, visiting Professor Rob Goldblatt. Towards the end of his stay they were visited by Dr Patrick Blackburn, a Waikato graduate now working at the Department of Computational Linguistics, University of Saarland, Germany. This provided the opportunity for the unprecedented event of 3 logic seminars on one day, viz.
Yde Venema: "Atom Structures of Boolean Algebras with Operators".
Patrick Blackburn: Model-Theoretic Syntax.
Rob Goldblatt: "The Algebra of the Lambda-Calculus".
Charles Semple has won a PhD scholarship from Victoria University of Wellington to work with Dr Geoff Whittle on matroid theory.
Christine Cameron has started a Masters project in Fractal Geometry and Faults, jointly supervised by Dr Mark McGuinness and Professor Euan Smith from Geophysics.
Mark McGuinness
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UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS
The former Department of Mathematics and Statistics has now officially been reorganized as the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics. Alfred Sneyd and Kevin Broughan are the joint chairpersons of the Department of Mathematics while Nye John is the chairperson of the Department of Statistics.
Student enrolments in mathematics this year are close to the same as last year. Most of the second and third year courses have now been semesterized. This has resulted in a number of staff having unbalanced teaching loads. This allows more research time in one of the semesters, but results in the other semester being very hectic!
Paul Watson who completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge has joined us as a FRST-funded NZ Science and Technology post-doctoral fellow. He is working with Ian Craig and Alfred Sneyd on astrophysical MHD.
After being with us for four years, our computer support person Craig Lynch-Blosse has left to further his studies at the University of Auckland.
Ingrid Melchert is currently on study leave.
Ernie Kalnins attended the Mathematics Workshop held in Tolaga Bay, while Alfred Sneyd attended the applied mathematics conference held in Masterton.
Last year's review of mathematics recommended that there should be a person in the Department who would coordinate the first year mathematics courses. This role of first year coordinator has been taken on by Graham French.
Professor Alfred Seeger of the University of Stuttgart is visiting Ernie Kalnins, while Douglas Bridges has Professor Ray Mines of New Mexico State University as a visitor.
From the next issue of the Newsletter, Stephen Joe will taking over as the mathematics honorary correspondent.
Seminars
R. Mines (New Mexico State University), "What exactly is a PID??".
T. Forster (University of Cambridge), "Alonzo Church's set theory".
D. Levi (University of Rome), "Lie symmetries for discrete equations".
A. Seeger (University of Stuttgart and Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung), "Theory of magnetic resonance".
B D. McKay (Australian National University), "Eulerian circuits in complete graphs".
K. Svozil (Vienna University of Technology), "Recent trends in quantum mechanics".
V. Jones (University of California at Berkeley and University of Auckland), "Planar algebras".
Kevin Broughan