IMA 2007 Summer event – “Stimulating Mathematics in Industry” Royal Society, London UK

Citation

(2008), "IMA 2007 Summer event – “Stimulating Mathematics in Industry” Royal Society, London UK", Kybernetes, Vol. 37 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2008.06737bab.005

IMA 2007 Summer event – “Stimulating Mathematics in Industry” Royal Society, London UK

IMA 2007 Summer event – “Stimulating Mathematics in Industry” Royal Society, London UK

This special event was arranged by the Institute of Mathematics and its applications (IMA) at the Royal Society, London in June 2007. This journal was represented by Professor Rudall and other colleagues. It was opened by a meeting of members and the capacity attendance included invited guests from the UK Government, Industry, Education and other professions and academic institutions, and associations.

The proceedings continued with the presentation of an honorary fellowship of the IMA. This took place in the Kohn Centre and Professor Peter Grindrod presented the fellowship of the IMA to Professor Keith Moffatt who is Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge. Dr Grindrod outlined the Research career of Professor Moffatt who has worked mainly in the area of fluid dynamic, in particular magneto-hydrodynamics and the theory of turbulence. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1986 and to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (his home city) a year later. Many readers will know of his activities as Director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (1966-2001).

Following this session participants were addressed by Dr John Ockendon who was the IMA Gold Medallist for 2006. The speaker, with Dr Leslie Fox (former Director of the Computing Laboratory at Oxford), provided key support for Alan Taylor in establishing the Oxford study group for industry. This became the Oxford' Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (OCIAM).

Dr Ockendotn became the Research Director of the Centre. The topic of stimulating industry in any endeavour is a particularly difficult activity and in the case of tackling it from a mathematical standpoint extremely challenging.

Dr Ockendon divided his address into:

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  a brief outline of the early days of the Study Group he is associated with;

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  an examination of the impetus that industrially-driven problems give to mathematics; and

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  the benefits that industrial researchers can acquire from the ideas that then emerge.

He included many examples of activities in areas of applied mathematics and in his own area of free boundary problems.

Cyberneticians would also have been interested in his comments on working in what we all recognise is a “highly interdisciplinary” activity.

The discussions that followed both during the session itself and later at the social function were most informative and confirmed that the occasion had indeed been a successful event. The Royal Society in Carlton Gardens, London, as usual, provided a most impressive venue for this event where academics, government officials and industry representatives could meet and discuss, their mutual problems and on this occasion, those involving stimulating mathematics in our industries.

Those who attended carried on their discussions at the buffet reception arranged in the Marble Hall of the Royal Society.