Minutes of the IUPAP Council Meeting

October 2, 1999, (afternoon)
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Participants:

Present: B. Richter, Y. Petroff, R. Turlay, J. Franz, R. Barber, K. Binder, P. Kalmus, J. Moran-Lopez, G. Yang, H. Yasuoka, E. Zingu

Absent: J. Nilsson, A. Ardeberg

Minutes of Council Meeting

Richter asked for any changes in the minutes of the Council meeting in Atlanta. Moran Lopez said that his name should be added to those who were present. With this change, the minutes were approved.

ICSU Matters

It was suggested that Richter's remarks at the ICSU meeting on the World Congress on Science be placed on the web along with the minutes of the current meeting. Each Union that plans to participate in the new inter-union committee on education is supposed to produce a 3-4 page paper on their current and planned educational activities. Sahm will be asked to take charge of preparing this.

Commission Affairs

Giora Mikenberg from the Weizman Institute in Israel was unanimously approved as a replacement member for C11. Franz will write a paragraph on the activities of each commission as reported at the CCC meeting and circulate the paragraphs to the commission chairs for their corrections and approval.

Affiliated Commissions

The new statutes of AC1, the International Commission for Optics, were unanimously approved. Petroff will check with the ICO to learn the names of their associated members.

Inter-Union Delegates

The inter-union delegates were approved as given in the list provided by Turlay. The missing delegates will be provided as decided in the meeting of the CCC. It was noted that Petley has agreed to be the delegate to two different groups. Since Petley has filled these roles for so long, concern was expressed about who would follow Petley. There needs to be someone in training. Barber agreed to draft a memo from Richter to Petley expressing these concerns and asking Petley to train someone to follow himself.

Richter asked why IUPAP should be involved in IU13. Barber said that he hasn't been attending the meetings. He agreed to send a message to the chair of IU13 saying that he will continue to be a contact but that IUPAP doesn't think that it needs representation at this point. Franz agreed to ask Malcom if she wants a representative from IUPAP on IU6. If so, C14 will supply this. The IUPAC Macromolecular Division had asked us for name of a liaison, which we have now provided. C3 has taken the primary role in this.

It was decided that the commissions should take responsibility for inter-union relations. T he Council will delegate to the commissions the responsibility to nominate representatives and to report back to the Council on inter-union activities. It is assumed that they speak on behalf of IUPAP in these other groups.

Associate Commissioners

Each commission is now allowed to have four associate commissioners. Binder requested that exceptions be allowed for more. It was agreed that to have more than four would require a written justification but that, if well justified, this would normally be approved. Petroff agreed to be an Associate Member of ICO and to contact ICO to get names of other Associate Members.

Committee on Bylaws and Statutes

It was agreed that the committee to update the bylaws and statues will consist of Petroff, Richter, and Nilsson. They will do a first draft which will go first to rest of the Council then to the commission chairs. The plan is to send the new bylaws and statutes to the liaison committees for comments in 2001 and then to ask for a vote at the General Assembly in 2002.

Working Group on Women in Physics

The charge for WGWP prepared by Franz was approved with the addition that the number of members of the WGWP could be increased as needed with approval of president. For the present the WGWP is expected to consist of nine women, including a younger person from China, plus two men. The membership will be finalized by Richter and Franz.

Yamaguchi Paper

Turlay will draft a letter to Yamaguchi from Richter and send it to Richter for his approval.

Conferences

It was agreed that, as an experiment, IUPAP will consider sponsoring regional conferences if they include a large attendance from developing countries and normally to take place in developing countries. It was also agreed that Commissions would be allowed to recommend up to three conferences for IUPAP sponsorship per year with the understanding that at most two would be eligible for financial support.

Member Affairs

The request for membership from Benin was discussed. Turlay had investigated this and found that there is one university with 50-60 faculty, most of whom are in medicine or agriculture. He asked whether it would be of use for this country to join IUPAP and on what Commissions other than C13 or C14 its physicists would eligible to serve. The question of Senegal's membership was then raised. Their application had been just from the one university and not from the physics community as a whole. If this problem can be fixed, then Senegal would be accepted as a member. Moran-Lopez said that he would be in Senegal in the near future and would discuss this issue with people there. He will report back to Turlay on his findings.

Turlay presented a request to IUPAP to publish a homage to Salam on the second anniversary of his death. The Council received this request and agreed that if it were appropriate, the homage would be placed on the IUPAP website.

The problems associated with proposals from the delegations from China regarding the listing of members in the General Report and related matters were discussed. It was agreed that the Nilsson's memo of August 12, 1999, represents the agreement between the two physical societies and that it is the formal basis for IUPAP actions.

Financial Matters

Franz presented a the following resolution to the Council: "Resolved that the Associate Secretary General is authorized to open and close bank accounts of the International Union of pure and Applied Physics, as necessary." This resolution was unanimously approved.

Franz reported that $661,576.44 had been transferred from Sweden to the United States and that Sfr 25,000 had been retained in Sweden for archiving IUPAP's records. The Council felt that this was quite expensive for archiving and asked Franz to inquire what it would cover and why it was so expensive. Franz then presented the budget for 2000. (See Attachment A.) Most of the budget had been prepared by C. Persson in Sweden but Franz had made a few adjustments. Petroff asked for more detail, but Franz explained that she had been unable to get any more detail from Persson. Nilsson has promised to provide a list of expenditure for the current year as these will be needed for the audit, but none of this information has yet arrived. The Council then approved the budget as presented. (See attachment 3)

Franz then asked for approval to use the audit firm of Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Since this is the firm that has been used in Sweden and the transfer of financial control has occurred in mid-year, it would be much easier to continue with the same firm, at least for the first year. Approval of this was given.

The Council agreed to leave the maximum registration fee for conference unchanged.

General Assembly 2002

Two bids to hold the General Assembly in 2002 were received, one from Beijing, China and one from Berlin, Germany. It was decided to approve the bid from Berlin in part because this would be less expensive for most delegates.

Other Business

It was decided that at the next CCC meeting there should be two scientific talks from two different Commissions. Petroff agreed to select the two Commissions and the Commission chairs will be asked to arrange for the talks. It was decided to invite leaders of the Megascience Forum to the next Council. meeting.

It was decided to hold the next CCC meeting in either Mexico or China. Moran-Lopez suggested a site in Cuernavaca and Yang suggested a site in Beijing. Turlay will assess relative costs for these two sites and report his findings to Richter.

Barber mentioned that he has a bust of Niels Bohr that belongs to IUPAP and asked what he should do with it. He will try to learn more about it and then the Council will decide where it should go.

Turlay agreed to contact Nilsson to obtain his paper on why countries or regions would want to join IUPAP.

The meeting was adjourned.

Appendix A: Approved budget for 2000