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Conference in Poland
I’m currently in a small village in Poland about to take part in a conference:
http://bcc.impan.pl/sga/
The general public may find it hard to believe but new mathematics is being produced all the time. Not only that the volume of new mathematics is huge. So huge that even the best mathematicians know only a very small proportion of it.
This week’s conference focuses on the geometric side of my area of interest, Singularity Theory (it’s a descendent of Newton’s calculus). I’ll be giving a short talk at the end of the week. Haven’t written it yet…
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Enjoy Bedlewo! There is some excellent swimming to be had in some nearby lakes, if you’re into that sort of thing… (I preferred the woodland walks myself).
Thanks. Had a good time – I’ll report when I get some of this marking finished…
I’m very interested to see you’ve been to a conference on mathematics in Poland. I assume you’re familiar with Polish work with the German Enigma machines in the run-up to World War Two and with the help they gave the Allied cause after September 1939. I looked into this a bit further once as was familiar with the phrase ‘reverse Polish notation’, and it seems the achievements with Enigma weren’t a flash in the pan – Poland seems to have form for mathematics going back at least to the C19th. Nowhere near that of the French for instance, but very respectable. I wonder if there’s any connection between all this and the fact your conference took place in Poznan? Anyway, history apart, I hope it all went well for you – at least you had pleasant and relaxing surroundings! PS: I believe some of the early work on Enigma took place at Poznan – either that or some of the team graduated from the University there.
Hi Humphrey,
I was aware of the Polish involvement with Enigma. Without the Polish input the Allies might never have had enough information to crack Enigma. And indeed there is a strong tradition of mathematics in Poland, for example see Banach.
The reason that the conference took place near Poznan is that many years ago someone donated a country house/palace to the government and it was turned into a mathematical conference centre.
Dear Kevin,
Very interesting to see you confirm my suspicions about Polish mathematics. I see on making further investigations that Sierpinski of fractal patterns (e.g. Sierpinski gasket) is also Polish, and that Stefan Banach to whom you refer invented a whole branch of mathematics! I daresay you’re already aware of all this. I wonder what the situation is in Poland now, given they are now a genuinely independent country?
There is as I suspected a genuine connection between Poznan and efforts to crack the Enigma code – according to ‘The Secret War’ by Brian Johnson all three of the principal mathematicians involved during the 1930s Polish effort graduated from Poznan University. Ironically they were helped by Poznan being then in a German-speaking area so they knew their opponents’ language!
I hope all is well with your department back in the UK and that you and your colleagues at Leeds are riding out the infamous cuts.
This is way better than a brick & mortar estaibslhmnet.