The UK mathematics education community now has a single voice as Christopher Llwellyn Smith, Provost of University College London, takes the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education. ACME will bring together academics, teachers and education specialists. It will be based at the Royal Society and is a partnership with the Joint Mathematical Council. Its members are Chris Belsom, Annie Gammon, Celia Hoyles, Chris Robson, Sue Sanders, Nigel Thomas and John Williams. Chris Robson will provide a link with the London Mathematical Society.

The Adams Prize has been won by a woman for the first time in its 120 year history. Dr Susan Howson, 29, a Royal Society fellow, lecturer at Nottingham University, and an LMS member, was lauded by the international judges for her research on number theory and elliptic curves. Previous winners of the £12,000 prize awarded by the Faculty of Mathematics, Cambridge University and St John’s College, Cambridge, include the physicist James Clerk Maxwell and geometer Sir William Hodge. Howson is a pure geometer mathematician, choosing her subject ‘because of the beauty of the theorems’.

The trustees of the Rollo Davidson Trust give notice that they have awarded Rollo Davidson Prizes for 2002 as follows:

• Stanislav Smirnov (Stockholm) in recognition of his achievements in critical perolation and conformality in stochastic processes.

• Balaji Prabhaker (Stanford) in recognition of his achievements in queueing theory applied to communication networks.

The Society’s Invited Lectures series consists of meetings at which a single speaker gives a course of about ten expository lectures, examining some subject in depth, over a five day period (Monday to Friday) during a University vacation. The meetings are residential and open to all interested. It is intended that the texts of the lectures given in the series shall be published. In addition to full expenses, the lecturer is offered a fee of £1250 for giving the course and a further fee of £1500 on delivery of the text in a form suitable for publication. Recent lecturers in the series have been P.F. Baum (1995), F.J. Almgren (1996), J. Alperin (1997), D. Zagier (1998), A. Mielke (1999), B. Dubrovin (2000), T. Goodwillie (2001). The 2002 lectures will be given at the University of Leeds by P. van Moerbeke.

On 6 March 2002 the New Zealand government announced the formation of the New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (NZIMA) as a Centre of Research Excellence. Another new Centre, the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular

Ecology and Evolution, has a major biomathematics component. The establishment of these two research centres amounts to a revolution in mathematics research funding in New Zealand.

The NZIMA is based at the University of Auckland and headed by Fields Medallist Vaughan Jones DSc FRS FRSNZ (Berkeley) and Professor Marston Conder (Auckland). It will be modelled on similar well-funded mathematical research institutes, notably the Fields Institute (Canada), IMPA (Brazil), MSRI (Berkeley), and the Newton Institute
(UK). In particular, it will place considerable emphasis on world-class research and the use of high-level mathematical techniques in modern application areas such as bioengineering, bioinformatics, medical statistics, operations research, and risk assessment.

Its activities will include:

• the organisation of two 6-month programmes each year, on themes drawn from a range of fields of significant interest.

• an associated workshop held at various locations around New Zealand, like the
  New Zealand Mathematics Research Institute Workshops held annually since 1995.
• establishment of annual Maclaurin Fellowships, to enable mathematical scientists from NZ or worldwide to take time out from their usual occupations and undertake full-time research in New Zealand (or partly overseas if based in New Zealand).

It is expected that NZIMA will open for business later this year.

The Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution will be located at Massey University and directed by Professors David Penny (biology) and Michael Hendy (mathematics). It will undertake studies of the ecology and evolution of New Zealand plants, animals and micro-organisms. Recent research, using new techniques such as sequencing of whole genomes and the study of ancient DNA, has revolutionised our understanding of New Zealand's biodiversity. The simplistic view that New Zealand is a ‘Moa’s Ark’ of relic species undergoing ‘ancient and slow’ changes over long periods of time has been overturned by the information obtained with these new techniques. The Centre’s vision is to utilise the network of outstanding New Zealand biologists and mathematicians, who have made significant contributions to developing new analytical methods and techniques in this area, to address some of the fundamental questions about
New Zealand's plant and animal life.

Rod Downey, President

New Zealand Mathematical Society