Welcome,

It is my honor and my pleasure to present to you today the second BMS newsletter. The last two months have been very exciting for the Berlin Mathematical School:

We welcomed new students, inaugurated the new BMS Lounge at the Humboldt University, and had many distinguished colleagues giving presentations here, including Wendelin Werner (Université Paris Sud), winner of a 2006 Fields Medal.

On December 1, 2007, I succeeded Günter M. Ziegler of TU Berlin as chair of the BMS, which you can read more about here. Enjoy and please feel free to forward this to anyone interested in Mathematics!

Sincerely yours,

Inside BMS: Vision and Mission of the One-Stop Office

Besides striving for academic excellence, the BMS is actively pursuing the goals of internationality, gender equality, and diversity. The BMS ensures a working environment that is accepting, liberal, and supportive for its students, faculty, and employees.

The BMS is dedicated to making top-notch mathematical education available irrespective of race, class, and gender. To make this vision come true, the One-Stop Office provides a wide range of services covering any issues that may arise, ranging from travel, visa, housing, language courses, bureaucratic issues to child care, music, and sports opportunities. Who are the people behind this?

Managing Director, Nadja Wisniewski, joined the BMS in May 2007. Returning to Berlin following her time as Director of the International Office at the University of Mannheim, she coordinates all BMS issues with the math departments of HU, FU, and TU Berlin. Tanja Fagel, BMS Diversity Manager, ensures that the needs of the BMS' diverse membership are addressed and their needs met. Her main goal for 2008 is to reach an equal distribution of female and male students inside BMS. Anja Bewersdorff looks after the BMS Phase II students, is the FU liaison, and the expert to turn to if you have any questions regarding health insurance, accommodation, or visa matters. HU liaison Mariusz Szmerlo is the contact person for the Phase I students and can answer any questions related to the admission process.

Life in Berlin

Bruno Benedetti joined the BMS in 2006, after completing his M.S. at his hometown university, the University of Genoa. He shares with us his impressions of his time in the “poor, but sexy city” of Berlin:

A challenge can push one to strive for excellence toward things thought unobtainable in ways never before imagined. The Berlin Mathematical School is composed of such challenges: born in the heart of old Europe, this institution strives to compete with the elite American universities, which will, no doubt, benefit by this competition greatly. This goal of excellence is pursued in all aspects at BMS. For example, a team of collaborators has helped me to efficiently navigate through all of the university's bureaucratic red-tape, and solved such real-life problems like finding an apartment, a doctor, and a language course. The environment here is highly cosmopolitan, and I had no problem whatsoever in feeling integrated, and at home. The research was stimulating from the very beginning. When I arrived here as Ph.D. student in the Combinatorics and Discrete Geometry group, which collaborates with analogous high-level research teams all over the world, the group's enthusiasm for its research and its challenges were overwhelming. I love that there's no "nerd" within the group, just lively, friendly and motivating professionals. Combinatorics or discrete geometry are not very popular topics in my country (Italy), and woefully so, no such research team exists in Italy. This is one of the main reasons for my presence at BMS together with the never-ending charm of Berlin: a "poor, but sexy" city, to quote the Mayor, a place where many challenges can be accomplished. 

How to Get to Berlin: BMS Scholarships for Ph.D. Students

The BMS offers financial aid, scholarships, and funding for their students. The team of the One-Stop Office will advise you in all financial matters.

The BMS offers scholarships for both Phase I and for Phase II students, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the "Excellence Initiative" and by the three Berlin universities. 92% of BMS students currently receive funding for their Ph.D. studies.

Typical Phase I scholarships are granted for 18 months (extendible to 24 months), and amount to at least 800 Euro per month, tax-free (no insurances included). Phase II scholarships are typically granted for 24 months (extendible to 36 months), and usually amount to about 1350 Euro per month, tax-free (no insurances included). Additional funds are set aside for BMS students with child-care needs.

Further funding for studies at the BMS can be obtained from various sources, such as the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) or the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, or via teaching assistantships (for example, at TU Berlin).

The application period for the academic year 2008/09 (winter semester 2008/09 and summer semester 2009) will end on May 31, 2008. Applicants interested in a scholarship must submit their application until December 31, 2007. After that date it will not be possible to apply for a BMS scholarship.

There is no tuition - only the registration fee at one of the three Berlin universities. Please submit your applications online, via the online submission form .

Math & Movies: Did you know?

Hugh Grant, Bruce Willis, and Tom Hanks surely did not study math, but did you know what they still have in common with Fields Medal Winner Wendelin Werner?

Without math Hugh Grant had never went up a hill and came back from a mountain, Bruce Willis had never saved the world, and Tom Hanks had never made it home.

The important role of mathematics in the dramaturgy of TV and film did not begin with the hit series “Numb3rs.” Riddles to be solved and solutions to be found create tension, excitement, and drive the plot ahead to keep the audience riveted.

In "Die Hard: With Vengeance" (1995) Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are given a five gallon jug and a three gallon jug, and must put exactly four gallons of water on a scale to keep a bomb from exploding. Find out more about Bruce and Math .

In "An Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain" (1995), Hugh Grant, playing a surveyor, is sent to a small town to see if their hill stands over 1,000 feet high, thus qualifying as a mountain.

Tom Hanks used math in "Cast Away" (2000) to computes the search area that rescuers must search. Assuming that the search area would be a circle centered on the point of last radio contact, Hanks' character, Chuck Noland, calculates the size of the search area based on an airspeed of 400 mph. If you want to see whether Tom got his math right and you don't want to rerun "Cast Away", check out the mathematical solution.

While Hugh, Bruce, and Tom might have started at school with some math and ended up on the big screen, Wendelin Werner did it the other way around: He had his movie premier when he was just 14. Werner's character was the little violin player in Romy Schneider's last movie "La Passante du Sans Soucis" (The Passerby) in 1982. 

In order to find out more about math and movies, please have a look at Oliver Knill's Homepage at Harvard, A.G. Reinholds Homepage, and G. Donald Allen's Homepage. For information on Wendelin Werner in "La Passante du Sans Soucis" please see his entry in the Internationl Movie Database .

BMS Special Feature: Opening of the BMS Lounge at the HU

On November 23, the BMS Lounge at the HU campus Adlershof officially opened! Following the BMS Friday colloquium the Lounge was opened in a short ceremony.

15 Students already enjoyed their new offices in the BMS lounge at the HU campus in Adlershof. There 20 spaces available for BMS students, and each office is equipped with desk, cabinet, and computer. Students can choose to study on their own in their office or join the discussions at the blackboard or in the seminar room. There is a kitchenette with coffee- and tea-making facilities. The BMS One-Stop Office has regular office hours in the Lounge on Tuesdays and Thursdays.The BMS Lounge at the HU campus Adlershof is located on the Ground Floor, House 1, Johann-von-Neumann-Haus, Rudower Chaussee 25, HU campus Adlershof.

Further BMS Fridays in the Winter Semester 2007/08

On Nov 2, Wendelin Werner (Université Paris Sud) presented “Coloring at Random” at the BMS Fridays.  Werner received a Fields Medal in 2006 for his work on the calculation of probabilities and biodimensionalities. For Werner new insights often occur precisely when ideas from different fields are combined. At the BMS he discussed the questions “How do random two-dimensional pictures behave on a large scale?” and “Can we understand their fractural structure?” with students, faculty, and staff.

Upcoming BMS Fridays:

• December 14, 2007 Ilka Agricola (HU Berlin):
  The E₈ challenge
  Followed by the End-of-the-Year-Get-Together of the BMS.
  
• January 11, 2008: Rupert Klein (FU Berlin):
  Multiple scales in Weather and Climate
• January 25, 2008: Ruth Kellerhals (Fribourg)
  Hyperbolic isometry groups and small volume (Kovalevskaya Colloquium)
• February 8, 2008: BMS Professor Shmuel Friedland (Chicago/Berlin):
  Counting matchings in graphs, with applications to the monomer-dimer models
• February 18/19, 2008: BMS Days!

You find further information, directions, and a list of former speakers here. 

Imprint

www.math-berlin.de

Created by Athena Wissenschaftsmarketing