NEWSLETTER

5ECM in Amsterdam
25th Anniversary of the EMS
André Ran (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Herman te Riele (CWI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
In 2001, the two of us worked
together for the first time on
the organisation of the Dutch
Mathematical Conference,
which is an annual congress
of the Dutch Royal Mathematical
Society (KWG).
Apparently, we did a nice job
because, later in the year, we
received phone calls from our
respective bosses telling us that we were the chosen victims
to try to get the fifth European Congress of Mathematics
to Amsterdam. We said yes (reluctantly) and were
joined by Jan Wiegerinck from the Korteweg-de Vries
Institute of Mathematics of the University of Amsterdam,
making a triumvirate. Thus, it became a joint effort
of the three mathematics institutes in Amsterdam.
In our innocence, we thought we would get it to Amsterdam
and then the big shots in the Dutch mathematical
world would take over to actually organise it. So, we
thought it would be a job spread over a few years, to write
a bid-book and negotiate with the selection committee of
the EMS. No big deal. Boy, how wrong we were.
Initially, everything seemed to go as planned. The bidbook
was a piece of cake and we obtained promises of
support from ministries, the municipality, scientific organisations,
etc. The site visit in 2003 was a very pleasant
experience and, in 2004, the decision was taken that
5ECM would be held in Amsterdam. To get an idea of
what this would entail, the “triumvirate” participated in
4ECM in Stockholm and we got a lot of good ideas. By
then, it was already abundantly clear to us that now we
had secured 5ECM for the Netherlands, and for Amsterdam
in particular, it was up to us to actually organise it.
And then the hard work began. Obviously, many who
had pledged support notified us that that was meant as
support in spirit and not in actual euros. Finding funding
was a constant worry for us but Jan took it upon himself
to organise this and managed to come up with interesting
sponsors. It became clear that support was a matter
of asking the right persons and we finally managed to get
a balanced budget, as well as a nice location. All kinds of
other organisational matters were solved for us by the
people from the organising agency ICS International
Conference Services B.V. (now called MCI Amsterdam).
The matter of a suitable venue was actually solved
during the site visit in 2003. We had several options but
the RAI convention centre in the southern part of town
turned out to be an excellent choice, with several hotels
nearby and easy train connections to Schiphol Airport.
In the meantime, the scientific organising committee,
headed by Lex Schrijver, and the prize committee,
headed by Rob Tijdeman, had jointly put together a very
interesting programme.
By the time the congress was about to start, we still
had some small items on our list to do but, on the weekend
before the congress, these were finally put to rest. On
Monday 14 July 2008 at 8:45 in the morning, about 800
mathematicians from more than 60 European countries
gathered at the RAI convention centre in Amsterdam
for the opening ceremony.
The opening ceremony was a spectacular affair. A
tableau vivante of Rembrandt van Rijn’s most famous
painting “The Nightwatch’’ was created on the stage by a
group of re-enactors. This was accompanied by drum rolls
from the drummers in the painting. In their midst was the
painter himself, who was played by the first speaker of
the opening session Robbert Dijkgraaf, currently Director
of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, at
the time a professor at the University of Amsterdam and
Chairman of the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences).
An excellent opening address by Dijkgraaf was
followed by a warm welcome by Ari Laptev, then president
of the European Mathematical Society. After that
came the ceremony announcing the prize winners: 10
young mathematicians were on stage for the EMS prizes,
together with the winner of the Felix Klein prize. All in
all, the conference was off to a good start.
There were several highlights from the conference: of
course the 10 plenary lectures (including those of Richard
Taylor and László Lovász) and 33 invited lectures, the lectures
by the 10 EMS prize winners sponsored by the Dutch
Foundation Compositio Mathematica: Arthur Avila, Alexei
Borodin, Ben Green, Olga Holtz, Bo’az Klartag, Alexander
Kuznetsov, Assaf Naor, Laure Saint-Raymond, Agata
Smoktunowicz and Cédric Villani, and a lecture by the Felix
Klein prize winner Josselin Garnier. Also, there were
three science lectures: one on quantum information theory
by Ignacio Cirac, one on climate change by Tim Palmer
and one on mathematical biology by Jonathan Sherratt.
The 5ECM conference also incorporated the annual
conference of the Royal Dutch Mathematical So-
EMS Newsletter December 2015 9