International Congress of Mathematicians at Hyderabad - 2010

* Zürich (1897)     * Paris (1900)     * Heidelberg (1904)    * Roma (1908)    * Cambridge, U.K. (1912)    * Strasbourg (1920)    * Toronto (1924)     *Bologna (1928)     * Zürich (1932)    * Oslo (1936)    * Cambridge, USA (1950)    * Amsterdam (1954)    * Edinburgh (1958)    * Stockholm (1962)    * Moskva (1966)    * Nice (1970)    * Vancouver (1974)    * Helsinki (1978)    * Warszawa (1982, held in 1983)    * Berkeley (1986)    * Kyoto (1990)     * Zürich (1994)    * Berlin (1998)    * Beijing (2002) * Madrid (2006)

Every time I read about International Congress of Mathematicians and Fields Medal… I wondered when will the extraordinary league of mathematicians come down to India?… and finally my wait seems to be over… the biggest conference in the field of Mathematics ..the

“International Congress of Mathematicians” will be held at Hyderabad in August 2010. The conference will include awarding Fields Medals to the mathematicians (under 40 years age) who have done significant contributions in enhancing different fields of mathematics. It is the highest honor in field of mathematics, often referred as ‘Nobel Prize for Mathematics’.  It will also include over 150 lectures in various sub-fields within mathematics.

I don’t know who would get the Fields Medal this time around but certainly it will be one of the most memorable moments of my life to witness some of the greatest mathematicians on this planet receiving the highest honor.  I might end up in tears of joy watching that moment… 

My only wish, Grigori Perelman comes down to Hyderabad to give a lecture on Poincare Conjecture!

http://uohyd.icm2010.in/index.php

The biggest challenge before me now is to solve a significant problem, write a paper and get it accepted for this conference.  Anyone interested to collaborate, please email me at mohdabubakr@hotmail.com. We will have a brainstorming session on choosing the problem statement and let’s see whether we can get it solved and published in the conference.

Do you look back at your life?

There are times when you want to look back at your life and think about how the life has been all these years. Often, people do this at a very old age, scanning over the joys and tears that life has given them. I have known few people who want to go back in their past to change certain incidents… I have known people who have lost their love because they didn’t take a decision at right time… I have known people who missed out saying ‘sorry’ to people before it was too late… and so on. Life goes on fast… really fast. We meet people, we make relationships, we break traditions, we create new boundaries and suddenly one day we leave everything to ahead towards an unknown destination called “death”.

In this entire journey, there are occasions when people have helped us. When I look back at life, I find myself incredibly indebt to lot of people. I don’t know where they are now, I wish I could tell them that I miss them but the cruel life doesn’t give a damn opportunity.

Sometimes, a little favor from an unexpected person makes deep impact on your life. Long back, during my college days, along with my friends, I went to an excursion to Kerala. I got little over-excited looking at the water fall and fell into it. For a moment I thought I am going to sink into the water but by God’s grace, there was a large stone under water and I landed up on that. I was stood on that stone helplessly, with water almost till my neck until a friend of mine called Adinarayana helped me come out of water. It was very generous of him to run down there to save me. Once I came out of that freezing water, the next big challenge was finding dry clothes. My clothes were at hotel and no one had any extra clothes. It was early December with 3 degree centigrade temperature and there was no way I could be on wet clothes till we reach hotel. Then came the second unexpected help… the bus driver offered me his pant to wear, though it was little loose for me. I changed into his pant and borrowed couple of jackets from my friends. By the time, we reached the hotel for dinner, I was shivering with cold and had high fever. We reached a tiny restaurant somewhere in Munnar, Kerala for dinner. All my friends were busy scanning the menu and irritating the waiter with their stupid jokes. After couple of minutes, I don’t know how, a friend of mine called Srinivasulu, got a bowl of hot corn soup for me from the restaurant’s kitchen. I don’t know how he did it… it was one of the nicest gestures shown by any of my friends.

After almost three years, when I look back at these incidences, it still appears very fresh and very kind of them. I wish… I could give them a hug and thank them.