Report on C18 type A conference: ICMP held in Lisbon, 2003
The fourteenth International Congress on Mathematical Physics (ICMP) was held
in Lisbon, Portugal, from July 28 to August 1, 2003. Inaugurated by the President
of the Portuguese Republic, and with just over 500 participants, it was the
biggest meeting in this interdisciplinary field ever organized in the Iberian
Peninsula. The scientific program of ICMP included 12 plenary speakers, 77 invited
talks and 190 posters. The list of sessions gives an idea of its scientific
range: Dynamical systems, Integrable systems and random matrix theory, Condensed
matter physics, Equilibrium statistical mechanics, Quantum field theory, Operator
algebras and quantum information, String and M theory, Fluid dynamics and nonlinear
PDEs, General Relativity, Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, Quantum mechanics
and spectral theory, Path integrals and Stochastic Analysis. Among the plenary
talks, we had two devoted to recent progress on the Boltzmann equation (Carlen, Villani), two on classical dynamical systems (Chenciner,
Krichever), one devoted to the problems of turbulent transport (Gawedzki), two
on mathematical problems of atomic physics (Solovej, Esteban). Quantum field
theory (Fredenhagen), Mathematical Quasicrystals (Moody) and recent developments
of String theory (Schomerus) were also presented, as well as recent ideas between Probability
theory and theoretical physics (Voiculescu, Smirnov). One of the plenary speakers
was a women (Esteban) and the participation of women, in general, was higher
than usual. This is due, in part, to the fact that Portugal is the EU country
with the highest proportion of women academics. A number of participants from developing countries were present,
from South America to India. For Young Researchers a special program was organized:
they had a Symposium of their own, two open days before ICMP. Since the plenary
speakers for this Symposium are quite famous, this YRS attracted more than 120
young researchers from around the world. A number of them, generally selected
by session organizers of ICMP had the opportunity to give a talk. The ICMP included
a well-attended Human Rights Session (chaired by J. Lebowitz) and a public evening
on the Sokal affair, and the recurrent controversy between "hard"
and social sciences. Together with its dozen of satellite meetings, ICMP Lisbon
mobilized in science about 1000 participants during the last summer, in a region
of Europe which was not, until recently, in the mainstream.
