Message from the president // Brief words from the editor-in-chief

The summer is slowly coming to an end and many of us are preparing to return to our teaching duties. I hope many of you found time for a well-deserved summer break, even if summer is often busy with other duties, such as conferences. I attended several conferences in the late spring and summer, sometimes representing the EMS as president, and at other times simply as a mathematician presenting my own research, and occasionally as both president and a mathematician. I enjoy it all. It is exciting to interact with close colleagues and collaborators and to get a chance to discuss research, but also to meet mathematicians from different areas of the field and from all over the world, not only within Europe.

In May I had the great honor of being invited to Oslo to give a speech celebrating this year’s Abel Prize Laureate Luis Caffarelli. I also went to both the 29th Nordic Congress in Aalborg, Denmark and to the 10th Congress of Romanian Mathematicians in Pitești, Romania. I am proud that EMS was directly involved in both events, highlighting its efforts to engage with all regions within Europe. The Nordic Congress was organized by the Nordic societies in collaboration with EMS. As part of the Romanian Congress, the EMS organized the first Balkan Mathematical Conference, and we are grateful to the organizers of the Romanian Congress for hosting us.

The Balkan Mathematical Conference (BMC) is a newly-launched EMS regional conference series. It is modeled on the Caucasian Mathematical Conference (CMC) which has now taken place three times, and we are already beginning to plan the next BMC which will be held in 2025. Please note that the call for hosting has gone live with a deadline of November 30th.⁠¹⁠https://euromathsoc.org/news/two-ems-calls-99 I really hope the regional conferences will continue to be a successful way for the EMS to broaden and diversify its reach. I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the former EMS vice president Betül Tanbay for her relentless efforts to help make all of this possible.

In my last message in the Magazine I enlisted all of you to encourage your colleagues to join the EMS as members. In my introductory speech at the Nordic Congress, I reiterated the same message. I would like now to repeat what I said then to encourage joining us as members of the EMS. People often ask what benefits come with a membership. There are, indeed, some great benefits, such as reduced registration fees for conferences organized by EMS and reduced prices from EMS Press. I am, however, proud that many offers from EMS do not require membership. It is, indeed, one of the most important goals of the EMS to support open science. As an example, the Magazine you are reading right now is open to all, members as well as non-members, and can be read on the EMS website. Many of the journals from EMS Press are open access for all through the fair principle of Subscribe to Open (S2O). The zbMATH Open offers open access for all to the oldest database for mathematicians. This is all to say, perhaps we should not be asking what we get as members, but rather what we support when we become members of the EMS. In my introductory speech at the Nordic Congress, I stressed that most of what EMS offers is open to all. Indeed, it may not be strictly necessary to become a member in order to partake in the many opportunities offered by the EMS, but this is actually exactly why I urge you to join us and help support our mission.

I wish you all a successful new academic year 2023/24.

Jan Philip Solovej

President of the EMS

As usually, this issue of the Magazine contains a number of articles in a variety of topics and I would just like to call your attention to two which illustrate a collaborative practice that has existed between the Magazine and several other publications. The issue starts with a translation into English of an article by Nikolay Tzvetkov first published in French in La Gazette des Mathématiciens. This is part of a long collaboration between the EMS and the SMF that has allowed the Magazine to regularly publish English translations of articles originally published in French in La Gazette. Similar agreements exist with other publications; for instance, articles originally published in the Magazine have been reproduced in, among others, the International Association of Mathematical Physics Bulletin, the Gazeta de Matemática (in Portuguese translation), and, in Chinese translation, the Mathematical Advances in Translation, a publication of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Another article in this issue that is part of a series shared with a different publication is the traditional interview by Bjørn Dundas and Christian Skau with the Abel prize winner which is published by the Magazine in the September issue and is reprinted about six months later in the Notices of the AMS. These collaborations are important to boost the readership and as a service to the mathematical community way beyond Europe and the usual readers of the Magazine. It would be interesting to expand them to other publications in other languages.

Finally, from 1 September two new editors are starting their duties in the editorial board: Marie Elisabeth Rognes, who will reinforce the Features and Discussion team, and Vesna Iršič, who will be responsible for the Young Mathematicians’ Column. A short biographical note of each of them can be found at the end of the issue. I am grateful to both for accepting to dedicate part of their time to our Magazine.

Fernando Pestana da Costa

Editor-in-chief

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   https://euromathsoc.org/news/two-ems-calls-99