I continue to invite commentary on any article in any issue of TopCom or on any topic of general interest to topologists, including news about topologists or topological activity.
You are invited to attend and participate in the Balogh Memorial Topology Conference to be held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio during November 15-16, 2002. All areas of topology or set-theoretic related mathematics will be welcomed.
The opening session will begin about 2:00 pm Friday afternoon on November 15. There will be a welcome reception on Friday night. The conference will continue through Saturday (November 16) and conclude with a dinner on that evening. Since several participants will actually be arriving on Thursday there will be a place to gather on Friday morning with coffee, juice and snacks.
A partial list of invited speakers includes:
Conference WEB-PAGE: http://notCH.mathstat.muohio.edu/balogh_conference
Convenient on-line REGISTRATION is now available. http://notCH.mathstat.muohio.edu/balogh/registration.html
Some ROOM AND TRAVEL INFORMATION can be found at: http://notCH.mathstat.muohio.edu/balogh/rooms_transport.html
ABSTRACTS can be submitted online or by e-mail. http://notCH.mathstat.muohio.edu/balogh/abstracts.html
The deadline for abstracts of contributed papers is October 25, 2002, but it would be helpful if they are submitted a bit earlier.
Contribute a RESEARCH PROBLEM to the conference. Consider doing this even if you can't attend the conference. http://notCH.mathstat.muohio.edu/balogh/problems.html
E-mail and office phone numbers for organizers: Dennis Burke burkedk@muohio.edu 513-529-3508 Sheldon Davis davissw@muohio.edu 513-529-3527
Revised: Sep. 6, 2002
Dear Colleague,I just finished writing a paper that, I hope, may have an effect on how we teach topology. It is available through the research part of my web site (http://www.math.utk.edu/~dydak/). The title is "Partitions of unity". The pdf version should work for anyone (the ps version may be good only for Macintosh users). Here is the abstract:
The paper contains an exposition of part of topology using partitions of unity. The main idea is to create variants of the Tietze Extension Theorem as the backbone of this approach. New tools include a calculus of partitions of unity and a connection to Ascoli Theorem which explains paracompactness of metrizable spaces and the reason why Tamano's Theorem holds. Another application of our calculus of partitions of unity involves metric simplicial complexes.
Jerzy Dydak
Partitions of unity (pdf file) (ps file)
Dear Mel,I am glad that you mentioned the floods in Prague on the Topology Atlas Topological Commentary. Although I lived in Poland, I never visited Prague until the summer of 2001. I attended a small conference in July, but could not stay for the big topology conference. Indeed, Prague is a beautiful city and fortunately the old town square was not damaged. The sad news for the mathematicians is that the Charles University math library has been devastated by the floods. The library was located in Karlin, the hardest hit area of Prague. See their web pages at http://www.mff.cuni.cz/povoden
Almost all math journals and books were destroyed and the library is asking for book donations, which should be sent to a temporary storage place.
Library
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Ke Karlovu 3
Praha 2, 121 16
Czech Republic
"(this is an undamaged building which provisionally houses the library). It would also be very helpful if it could be accompanied by a letter stating that it is a gift to help the library of the school (for duty/tax purposes)."
My guess is that they do not need just any junk books like "office-glutting old calculus books", but any good math or physics book will be appreciated. The library posted the list of lost books and journals at the above web site. They need money as well. The American Mathematical Society will help by donating back issues of the AMS journals and provide some help with book donations. Elsevier will donate the back issues of Topology and its Applications that they have in stock. Topology Proceedings will do the same.
Best wishes,
Krystyna
Received Septemnber 12, 2002
A meeting entitled Mathematical Structures for Computable Topology and Geometry was held in Dagstuhl, Germany May 26-31, 2002 at the Schloss Dagstuhl Internacional Conference and Research Center for Computer Science. The organizers were R. Kopperman (City College of New York, USA), M. B. Smyth (Imperial College, London, GB), and D. Spreen (Univ. Siegen, D).
From the conference website (http://www.dagstuhl.de/02221/):
"Topological notions and methods have successfully been applied in various areas of computer science. Computerized geometrical constructions have many applications in engineering. The seminar will concentrate on mathematical structures underlying both computable topology and geometry."
The organizers then list a number of mathematical topics which were represented by the participants at the seminar. These include digital topology and digital geometry, partiality, domains, locales and formal topology, cell complexes, and oriented matroids.
"It is the aim of the seminar to bring together people working in fields like domain theory, computer science oriented topology and geometry, formal topology,... and to foster interaction between them. Moreover, we want to encourage communication and, hopefully, collaboration between computer scientists and those mathematicians who work on similar problems but from a different perspective and who, often, are not aware of the computer science motivations."
Two group photos of the participants may be found at the url: http://www.dagstuhl.de/02221/Photos/
More information about Dagstuhl seminars may be located at the url: http://www.dagstuhl.de/Seminars/index.en.html
Received Septemnber 12, 2002
Biography of John Rainwater by Robert R. Phelps
Received October 21, 2002