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The Institut Mittag-Leffler experienceA collection of testimonials by mathematicians who have worked at the Institute.Henning Haahr Andersen Alexander Barvinok Louis Billera Enrico Bombieri Julius Borcea Francesco Brenti Anders Claesson Nils Dencker Sandra Di Rocco Sy Friedman John Garnett Jacob E. Goodman Roger Heath-Brown Dennis Hejhal Sigurdur Helgason Ira Herbst Helge Holden Søren Jøndrup Mihyun Kang Harry Kesten Dmitry Khavinson Don Knuth Christian Krattenthaler George Lusztig Paul Malliavin Benoit Mandelbrot Eran Nevo Emma Previato Fanja Rakotondrajao Kristian Ranestad Claus Michael Ringel Hans Ringström Bruce Sagan Boris Shapiro John Shareshian Alan Sola Gregory Sorkin Lynn Arthur Steen Jeff Steif Jouko Väänänen André Weil Jon Wermer Jean-Christophe Yoccoz Günter Ziegler Rade Zivaljevic The Institut Mittag-Leffler is a truely unique place for doing mathematical research. On my two longer visits there I found that the informal and cozy atmosphere, the well-equipped library, and the friendly staff provided an ideal situation for concentrating on my research witout the many disturbances that go with everyday life in a university position. - Henning Haahr Andersen, University of Aarhus I worked at Institut Mittag-Leffler twice. Both visits were quite memorable in many respects. Mathematically, they were among the most inspirational days of my life (so far). During my 1991 stay (as a postdoc), as the Soviet Union, my home country, changed its name twice and then decided to disintegrate, I was immersed in a number of research projects (on integer points in polyhedra, on systemsof real quadratic equations, and on hyper-Pfaffians and determinants), met and befriended many wonderful mathematicians, learned TeX, and read collected works of A. Cayley in the library. Plain and simple, the 1991 visit launched my mathematical career. - Alexander Barvinok, University of Michigan I have been fortunate to have had two semester-long visits to Institut Mittag-Leffler, IML, separated by 13 years. Each time, I began new collaborations with other members. In both cases, the resulting work went on for years after we left the institute. These new collaborations were a result of informal conversations that took place in the house over the course of a normal day. (If I recall correctly, both of these conversations took place in the kitchen, the main crossroad of the institute!) The second of these collaborations has completely redirected my own research since then. My point is that IML is unique among mathematics institutes in that it is not a conference center but a place to do mathematical research. Its unique setting, together with a limitation on the number of formal lectures, provides a perfect place for this to go on. I should note that the first of my IML collaborations was with someone who was then still a graduate student. He went on from IML to complete his degree, after which he came to a postdoctoral position at my institution. He has since gone on to a very successful career in research. Years later, his Ph.D. advisor thanked me for keeping him in mathematics. Surely a lot of the credit for that must go to the IML. - Louis Billera, Cornell University My first visit at the Mittag-Leffler Institut was more than thirty years ago. There was a special program in number theory that I could not miss. I remember taking long walks along the shore, with Paul Cohen and Dennis Hejhal, late during the June nights when it never gets dark. The subject of conversation often was `around' the Riemann hypothesis. Was it provable? Was it accessible to harmonic analysis? Could it be accessible to a purely arithmetical, elementary proof? Paul thought that harmonic analysis on the ideles was the key and, much later, Alain Connes produced some evidence in that direction. I thought, influenced by Stepanov's ideas for the Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields, that a really elementary proof was possible. Perhaps, even the claim by Stieltjes of an arithmetical proof, in his two famous letters to Mittag-Leffler (I had seen them in the archive!), supported my thesis. Like Fermat's marginal note, Stieltjes notes were lost, and Stieltjes himself claimed his proof was `very painful'. Anyway, I agreed with Paul and Paul agreed with me, too. In the end, there was no doubt among the three of us that the Riemann hypothesis had to be true. Since then I have visited the Institute several times and I met new directors that succeeded Lennart Carleson, now a legendary figure of the Institute, with whom I have maintained a good friendship. My goal during this visit (May-June 2011) was to continue a study, initiated with Jean Bourgain at my home institution, on a mathematical problem arising from a question in mathematical physics. The problem is quickly reduced to a difficult question in number theory. A first attack using arithmetic geometry gave some new information, but not a complete solution. An attempt to go deeper along this line led to very complicated formulas, which could be handled successfully only with the help of computer algebra. This fitted well with the main theme of this year at the Institute, namely, computational geometry. In one of many attempts for simplifying the big formulas I was encountering, I stumbled on a method that looked promising. To my surprise, it gave a totally unexpected description of the complicated plane curve of degree 6 I wanted to study. It really was a chance discovery. Then real progress was made when I mentioned this surprise finding to Ciro Ciliberto, one of the mathematicians visiting the Institute at the same time. Ciro pointed out that the simplified model I was studying actually was a well-known geometric object, namely, a rational elliptic surface associated to the Halphen pencil of sextics, discovered by Halphen back in 1882 in a famous memoir. This remark proved to be a turning point. This surface was the third one in Beauville's classification, exactly a century later, of the six, unique, semi-stable rational elliptic surfaces with the smallest number of special fibers in the elliptic fibration and is closely associated with modular functions. So this finding is intriguing and of definite interest. The mathematical life at the Institute, with several good lectures and with lively discussions with the visiting members, has been all the time at the highest level and I found here exactly the right environment suitable for doing mathematical research. First, here we have a quiet, comfortable environment suitable for spending time thinking, without distractions. A first class library and good computer support is at the complete disposal of the visiting mathematician, not only during the day but also late at night. Second, I found the presence of fellow mathematicians working in areas sufficiently close to my own interests, so we had useful, constructive discussions and could exchange ideas. Third, the location of the Institute in the Villa Mittag-Leffler in Djursholm has many advantages. The town is small, quiet, in a beautiful location, with good essential services available to the visitor. There is an excellent system of public transportation. Going to the city, to the University or the KTH, is very easy. At the same time, not being located in Stockholm removes a big potential distraction and I have noticed that visitors at the Institute indeed work very hard in their offices in the Villa, limiting their sightseeing to the weekends.
I very much enjoyed my stay as a postdoc at Institut Mittag-Leffler in Spring 1999 (during the programme ``Topology and Geometry of Quantum Fields''). The Institute provided optimal conditions conducive to high-level research allowing plenty of time for own work and interactions with the other participants or mathematicians from the Stockholm area (KTH, Stockholm University). This was right after my PhD from Lund University and it was therefore a timely opportunity to meet new people, diversify my research interests, and start new projects - a quite enriching experience in all respects. - Julius Borcea, Stockholm University, Sweden What IML has meant to me: --- to me, IML has meant the happiest mathematical year of my life. What IML has meant to my research: --- IML enabled me to broaden my research interests thanks to the ample time that I had available, the excellent library and colleagues. What IML has meant to my career: --- having broader research interests definitely enhanced my professional and scientific career. - Francesco Brenti, Università di Roma "Tor Vergata", Italy The initial plan for my RIP stay at Institut Mittag-Leffler was to put the finishing touches to a rather extensive piece of research on 2-stack sortable permutations that I and two colleagues at my home institution had been working on for almost 6 months. However, as the date for my departure approached it became clear that there was still more that had to be done than just finishing touches. Specifically, we needed to find a bijection between a set of pattern restricted permutations and a certain class of trees. Arriving at IML I was greeted by the same genuinely inviting atmosphere that I had experienced at previous visits to IML. I also found that I had been given a very nice and functional office at the top floor of the villa. Almost immediately I set about finding the bijection. The following days I worked long hours, only occasionally leaving my office to find inspiration in the beautiful library. A few days into my visit I delivered a seminar at KTH. This gave me a welcome opportunity to meet with the local combinatorialists. To sum up, I could not be more pleased with my short visit to IML and I'm very grateful for beeing given this opportunity. In particular I would like to commend the extraordinary competent and friendly staff at IML. Did I find the bijection? Yes, shortly after returning to Reykjavik and in cooperation with my colleagues. I'm convinced that a contributing factor to this success was that I was given time to gather my thoughts at IML. - Anders Claesson, University of Reykjavik
I was a guest at the IML in September 2000. It was a very enjoyable experience and gave me the opportunity to meet the finnish logician Tapani Hyttinen, with whom I have collaborated since. My work with Tapani has drawn me into an entirely new area of research and has therefore been of special importance for my scientific career. - Sy Friedman, Kurt Gödel Research Center, University of Vienna I first visited the Institut Mittag-Leffler at age 30 in the Summer and Fall of 1971. In the early summer I met Don Burkholder, Dick Gundy, Charles Fefferman, Harold Shapiro, Per Sjölin, and Adriano Garsia. Burkholder and Gundy taught me about maximal functions and martingales. The Fefferman-Stein paper about BMO and Hardy spaces was just coming out, and Garsia showed up so excited that we had to have a seminar talk by Fefferman on a July Sunday morning. That was my introduction to BMO and Littlewood-Paley theory. I also learned a lot from Shapiro that summer. Lennart Carleson showed up a week or two later and he and I began working on a problem that we never solved: determine the interpolating sequences for the space of bounded harmonic functions on the unit ball of $\R^n.$ Although we never solved that problem, working on it gave me skills later used on many other problems. In Fall 1971 there were seminars on complex analysis and exciting lectures by Ahlfors and Bers. At that time I also met Bill Abikoff, Alan Beardon, John McMillan, Seppo Rickman, the late Björn Dahlberg. My second visit was for a sabbatical in the Spring of 1974. Milne Anderson, Nick Varopolous, K.O. Widman, David Adams, and the late Allen Shields were there. Anderson and I lived in rented rooms in a large house that had become a German Catholic convent and nursery school. We talked a lot about BMO and product domains, Lennart came up with an important example on the bidisc, and I worked on a corona problem that I finally solved 10 years later with Peter Jones during my next sabbatical at Institut Mittag-Leffler, in Winter 1984. The 1984 Winter visit was delightful. I lived in the yellow house with its 1910 Encyclopedia Brittannia, and spend the days talking with many mathematicians. The Winter was beautiful. In total I spent a full year except Christmas holiday at the Institut, spread over three sabbatical visits in 13 years. The Institut, and Lennart Carleson, has had immeasurable impact on my career and on my perspective about mathematics. - John Garnett, UCLA I applied for, and received, a Fulbright fellowship for the fall of 1991 with the intention of working at Institut Mittag-Leffler as part of the program in combinatorial geometry to which I had been invited. My stay was not very long (I recall that it was something like eight weeks), but the conditions were so excellent that I got a good deal of work done and began several collaborations that turned out to be quite fruitful. I continued joint work with Ricky Pollack, and Rafe Wenger and Tudor Zamfirescu joined us for a sequence of papers that solved some long-outstanding conjectures. The situation at Institut Mittag-Leffler is ideal for work. One is as isolated as one could wish, at times, and as in touch with other people working in the same area as one could imagine. And the possibility of exposure to still other mathematicians in related areas, with the chance that new ideas might be stimulated, is great. All in all this was one of the most creative periods of my mathematical career, and I was -- and am -- grateful for the opportunity of having been there. - Jacob E. Goodman, The City College of New York, USA I spent a fortnight at the Institut Mittag-Leffler during the 1977/78 program on Analytic Number Theory and Harmonic Analysis. I had just finished my doctorate. I had never attended more than a one-day conference before, and so this was a wonderful opportunity to meet all the people whose work I had studied and admired so much - Bombieri, Montgomery, and Carleson of course. I remember much about the institute. I remember learning things from the other people there- including two gems that have stuck with me ever since. And I remember having fun! - Roger Heath-Brown, University of Oxford "In late May (1978, ed. remark), when I arrived at the Mittag-Leffler Institute, I was naturally looking forward to hearing for myself what was going on. Besides Paul (Cohen, ed. remark), several other key people from the spring semester were still around, including Enrico Bombieri. To make a long story short, it turned out that both Paul and Enrico were actively thinking about the R.H. -- albeit along much different lines." .... "With the approach of Swedish Midsommar, things were naturally coming to a close, and they managed to do so in a very good way. Lennart Carleson, the Institute director, invited a group of us out to dinner at the Operakällaren, one of Stockholm's finest restaurants, located quite close to the Royal Palace. We had a wonderful meal there. Upon returning to the Institute housing area around 10:30 p.m., it was Paul, as I recall, who said: "It's still so light out, let's take a walk down by the [picturesque Djursholm] waterfront." After saying a few good-nights, the three of us -- Paul, Enrico and myself -- decided to do just that. As we walked along and talked, still properly attired in our suits, there was much laughter as Paul intermittently imitated Selberg with near perfection (even down to his accent). We soon came to a kind of clearing where one could get closer to the water's edge. Somehow, a small stone got flung and skipped across the surface of the water. This was promptly followed by another, leading to a brief contest to see [what else!] who could get "the most zeros on the line". Paul and Enrico were quite good. I made a few good-natured attempts in honor of, e.g., C.L. Siegel, but my method had a decided propensity for getting them under the line. It was a memorable evening -- and a warm-hearted way to close out our respective stay at Mittag-Leffler." Excerpt from: Notices of the Amer. Math. Soc., Vol 57, No 7, 2010, pp 832-833 -Dennis Hejhal, Uppsala University At least 9 Icelandic mathematicians have visited Institut Mittag-Leffler for longer or shorter periods. This number is clearly quite large, relative to population, and in fact includes virtually all Icelandic mathematicians active in research. In addition, the mathematics library at the University of Iceland is still rather limited and the mathematicians relatively isolated although Iceland has at an early stage absorbed the computer culture. A stay at the Institute has therefore been very useful and stimulating for each of them. Putting all this together one might argue that there is hardly any country whose mathematicians have benefitted more from Institut Mittag-Leffler than Iceland has. So on their behalf I want to bring this Institute their profound thanks. - Sigurdur Helgason, MIT I spent 12 months in 1980-81 at the Institut Mittag Leffler during a Mathematical Physics year. It is hard to describe how beneficial this year was to my research program and how wonderful the environment was. My kids were fluent in Swedish in no time with the help of teachers at the neighboring elementary school, Vasaskolan, which they attended. They had many Swedish friends and really loved the experience. The atmosphere was particularly conducive to research and collaboration with few outside influences. For example there was only one afternoon per week reserved for seminars, but unlimited opportunity to discuss with colleagues at the Institute. I enjoyed it so much that I have been back several times, unfortunately for periods of only about three months. - Ira Herbst, University of Virginia Institut Mittag-Leffler solves three of the outstanding problems of modern theoretical science: 1. To have long and uninterrupted time for research 2. To have world experts at hand 3. Access to a good library - Helge Holden, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
The Institut Mittag-Leffler is one of the few research institutes in the world where a small group of mathematicians in closely related fields can spend a few months working together. There are essentially no bureaucratic requirements and the participants can interact as much, or as little as they desire. Personally, I have spent semesters at Institut Mittag-Leffler in the different circumstances of someone a few years after his PhD and of someone a year before his retirement (as well as time in between). I learned of new problems and made progress with co-authors on old problems during each stay. I have found the mathematical atmosphere at the Institut Mittag-Leffler highly stimulating on each occasion. - Harry Kesten, Cornell Univerity There has never been a better place for me than the Institut Mittag-Leffler. I have visited it many times and twice spent a month there, in 92 and 99. Those were one of very best memories I have. (I was the last speaker in the last millennium). I cannot compare the scientific atmosphere, coziness and the physical beauty of its surroundings to any other place. No place did better for my mathematical life than Institut Mittag-Leffler. I am now looking forward to visit again in a couple of years. - Dmitry Khavinson, University of South Florida, USA The autumn and winter months that I spent at Institut Mittag-Leffler rank among the most pleasant and most productive of my entire life. I feasted on the wonderful library, and got to know dozens of wonderful mathematicians of all ages. - Don Knuth, Stanford University I spent three months at the Institut Mittag-Leffler during the ``Algebraic Combinatorics" Programme in Spring 2005. I must say that these three months have been the most productive for me in the past years, with 6 papers produced in this short time, and several later ones taking the inspiration from discussions that I had with colleagues at the Institut during that time. (The influence in my work still persists.) In particular, I would have never been able to write my 100 page article "Advanced determinant calculus: a complement" if I would not have had the chance to stay for 3 months in the quiet, inspiring atmosphere at the Institut, with its wonderful library facilities. - Christian Krattenthaler, Universität Wien I have visited Institut Mittag-Leffler for the Fall of 1993. I enjoyed enormously my time at the Institute. The working conditions were excellent: I worked in an office under a big painting of K. Weierstrass which was very inspiring; I lived in an apartment at about two minutes walk from the Institute; I enjoyed the beautiful surroundings of the Institute. During my stay at the Institute I had one of the most productive periods of my mathematical life. In particular my work on Total positivity in reductive groups was done during this time. When I did this I greatly benefited from the wonderful library at the Institute (I needed several references to journals published in the early 1900's for which the Institute library is unrivalled). All in all my experience at Institut Mittag-Leffler was very memorable for me. - George Lusztig, MIT My experience is based on many sojourns starting from the reopening of the Institute by Lennart Carleson in 1969 with a program on Harmonic Analysis until my last participation in 2007 with a program on Stochastic Partial Differential Equations.  Paul Malliavin and Marta Sanz-Solé in the Flower room I love the quiet atmosphere of the Institute, the incredible beauty of its surrounding landscape, the great quality of its housing facilities located a few meters from the scientific building, the outsanding quality of the Library. The Seminars run in the year program sometimes modelled the future of the corresponding field, as that has been the case for the 1976 year in Harmonic Analysis. Also it is very easy, from this quiet place, to reach Stockholm and its scientific surrounding. At Institut Mittag-Leffler I have the tranquility for writing up, alone or in collaboration, papers which we have not been able to built up elsewhere before. For instance a one hundred pages paper, Stochastic Calculus of Variations and Hypoelliptic operators, has been elaborated during a two months stay at and appeared in the Mittag-Leffler Preprint series, where it stood as a highly quoted reference, until the printed version was realized several years after. Now under the name of "Malliavin Calculus" it is the object of more than one hundred thousands quotations on the WEB. Without the working atmosphere at Institut Mittag-Leffler it is not clear that I could have ever completed this one hundred pages manuscript. - Paul Malliavin, Paris On several brief visits including three major occasions the Institut Mittag-Leffler has been my “home". It has provided a powerful, durable, and unforgettable experience. The first and most major occasion was when the Institute’s key subject for the year was the iteration of rational functions. In the 1910s, this topic has seen extremely spectacular results in pure mathematical masterpieces by Fatou and Julia, but soon became dormant for lack of challenging new questions. In the 1940s my Uncle Szolem recommended it to me as a possible PhD topic. Like everybody else, I found it hopeless and went in what seemed to be a completely different direction. At one point Professors Lennart Carleson and Peter Jones generated the feeling that a special year at Institut Mittag-Leffler may help revive this dormant theory. Totally unaware of their project, I conceived the idea that my mastery of the computer might help me respond belatedly to my Uncle’s advice. Indeed it did and I obtained and published a batch of problems and conjectures. The Fatou-Julia theory was suddenly re-awakened by my work, particularly so by an object that soon became known as the “Mandelbrot set.” Those conjectures unleashed a great deal of effort world-wide and the Mittag-Leffler year on iteration theory turned out to be an extremely fruitful miracle of timing. It helped the theory of iteration develop and become rooted. However my key original conjecture -- currently stated as “the M-set is locally connected”-- remains open. My second and third major visits to the Institute were triggered by two very different projects that I had initiated. About other years I know little; not every year can be expected to be equally miraculously well-timed and influential. However, history and Sweden’s remoteness in older years had endowed Sweden’s mathematics with a very special tone that persists and unquestionably deserves to continue to be well-supported. - Benoit Mandelbrot, Yale University I attended the semester on Algebraic Combinatorics held on Spring 2005. At that time I was a PhD student at the Hebrew University. The period at Institut Mittag-Leffler was most productive for me in various respects: * learning from and having inspiring discussions with experts in the field, * big progress in my own research, and * start of collaboration with other mathematicians. Getting to know many of the mathematicians active in algebraic combinatorics was handy later when I applied for a potdoc position. So far I never had a period when I immersed myself so deeply in mathematical research as back then. I'm thankful for having this opportunity, from which I benefited a lot. - Eran Nevo, Cornell University My first time at Institut Mittag-Leffler, as a freshly-minted Ph.D., I began the most important collaboration of my entire life. We were encouraged to run a special seminar, and had debriefing sessions once a week around the fireplace, which bears Mittag-Leffler's aphorism "Without number, Thought would not exist". My second time, as a late-career visitor, the Mittag-Leffler cured me of depression. I had been unable to write mathematics for three years; at the Institute, I wrote five papers in three months (four are now in print), http://www.mittag-leffler.se/preprints/0506f/  Professor Mittag-Leffler's generosity and vision gave Sweden, and the world, this mathematical gem: he would be pleased with the excellence of the programs. It helps, too, to be breathing history; it helps that the surroundings' stark beauty is stunning; it helps that the Institute's personnel are superb. Thanks, to the current cadre: Thank you, Alexander, Fawzi, Margareta, Marie-Louise, Mikael, Thank You! - Emma Previato, Boston University Could I tell you my experience during my visit at Institut Mittag-Leffler, programme Algebraic Combinatorics, 2005? First of all, I was very honored being the first Malagasy visitor at this famous Institute. It was a great opportunity to my life as well as to my career as mathematician researcher. Being isolated, and being oppressed as a woman in my departement, I appreciated very much the contacts to other visitors, and their assistance. Even though it did not change my colleagues' attitude, their support helped me a lot to overcome my problem. Working to the full conditions: rich library (which is an utopy in my country!) and being in contact with outstanding mathematicians of my field of research, I could spend much time to research. - Fanja Rakotondrajao, Université d'Antananarivo, Madagascar
The two months which I spent at Institut Mittag-Leffler where one of most exciting periods in my life: To be away from all the odd duties at the home university is always a gain, but usual invitations to other institutions come with extra strings attached. At IML I felt really free to work and the nice surroundings with the possibility to walk in nature was an additional reward. And I enjoyed very much that other mathematicians working on parallel problems were around so that I could discuss on the spot all the problems which I was faced with. In my opinion, this balance between a completely free schedule, but still the possibility to cooperate with colleagues is the best breeding ground for doing mathematics. Don't change the system. - Claus Michael Ringel, Universität Bielefeld Due to the special nature of the subject of mathematics, that knowledge accumulates without there ever being a clean break with the past and a new start, it consists of a vast body of knowledge divided into a large number of fields. As a consequence, it is often, for a given field (such as my own), not possible to have many representatives in a given country, much less at a given department. If the interaction of the workers in the field were restricted to conferences, the resulting isolation would be a serious problem for the development of the subject. It is necessary to have extended periods of interaction with large numbers of researchers involved in order for collaborations to start between those who have not already worked together previously, in order to make a thorough comparison of competing methods to reach the same goal and in order to maintain a vigorous discussion on what are the central questions of the field. The possibility of organizing such extended periods of interaction is what the Institut Mittag-Leffler provides, and it consequently plays an essential role in the survival of many fields in the subject of mathematics. - Hans Ringström, KTH, Stockholm I have visited Institut Mittag-Leffler a number of times and it is a fantastic place to work. The quality of the mathematicians invited and the talks given is extremely high, making the experience very stimulating. The pleasant working environment in the main building and having the living quarters so close also make it easy to focus on research. Sweden can be justly proud of having one of the world's best mathematics institutes. - Bruce Sagan, Michigan State University, USA I participated in the activities organized by the institute on three different occasions: during the academic year 91/92, Spring of 2005 and the academic year 2006/2007. The first two were programs in algebraic combinatorics and the latter program on moduli spaces. I also attended different lectures at the institute from time to time since I have a privilege to live in Stockholm. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of my participation since I met a large number of younger and senior mathematicians there who eventually became my coauthors and close acquaintances. Some joint papers were the direct result of my participation but also I was able to establish personal contact with a large number of specialists in different fields which makes it now possible to communicate with them on various mathematical and other professional subjects. I find the style of doing mathematics at the institute very appropriate for my personal taste since the absence of an overloaded program packed with many talks and extra conferences leaves quite a lot of time for doing actual mathematics (which I think should be the main goal of such institutions). I know that many of the former visitors to the institute share my opinion. This is quite a refreshing experience in comparison with the majority of other similar (old and new) mathematical centres where you spent most of your time attending all kinds of planned activities and too little time is left for the actual research. - Boris Shapiro, Stockholm University I had the good luck to spend a month at Institut Mittag-Leffler during the spring 2005 program. There I began a collaborative project which has already led to several joint papers and remains ongoing. It is very unlikely that this project would have even started had we not been in the same place at the same time, as the basic idea arose suddenly during some face to face discussions. Moreover, the fantastic atmosphere for research at the institute was instrumental in allowing us to gain momentum when the project was in its initial stages. - John Shareshian, Washington University, St. Louis I spent nine months at Institut Mittag-Leffler, IML, during the second year (1970/71) of its initial program on harmonic analysis. I was attracted to the Institute for a variety of incidental reasons: I needed a location for my first sabbatical leave; I knew a bit of Lennart Carleson's work from my graduate studies; and I wanted an excuse to attend the 1970 International Congress of Mathematicians which was meeting the first week of September in Nice. What I didn't have was a clear research agenda in harmonic analysis. Nonetheless, my experience at IML had a profound influence on my future career in ways that I could never have anticipated when I sought funding for my visit from the U.S. National Science Foundation. As my faculty position was in a liberal arts college, my interest in harmonic analysis was colored by the goal of upgrading the undergraduate curriculum to prepare students for strong graduate programs. As I began exploring Mittag-Leffler's stunning library of old mathematics books, I became increasingly interested in the historical roots of analysis. I spent hours just browsing in the round tower which housed these oldest books, hardly believing that I had at my fingertips so many classics of the mathematics literature. Soon I found myself working on several projects stimulated as much by the books that surrounded me as by the on-going program on harmonic analysis. Two were sets of notes--one on the history of modern analysis, the other on the application of Lie groups to quantum mechanics-that led to courses I taught when I returned home. Two were expository papers, one on the history of spectral theory that appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, the other on what came to be called "non-standard analysis" that appeared in Scientific American, an American news magazine featuring articles about science written for non-scientific readers. These excursions into historical and expository writing were both motivated and enabled by the unique resources available at IML. Subsequently, these articles led me to further opportunities for writing about mathematics for general audiences (e.g., for the weekly Science News and annual updates on mathematics for the Encyclopedia Britannica). This work led indirectly to my being elected President of the Mathematical Association of America and to many subsequent other challenges and opportunities. - Lynn Arthur Steen, St. Olaf College
At night I used to sit in the incomparable library which Mittag-Leffler had spent a lifetime assembling with loving care in his villa. Perhaps its main attraction to me was the room where lay his correspondence, neatly arranged in boxes bearing the names of the great ones of the past half-century; they were all there to keep me company while everyone was asleep, opening up for me the secret recesses of their minds. - André Weil I spent the month of mid-February to mid-March 2008 at Institut Mittag-Leffler, taking part in the program on several complex variables. The best thing about the stay for me was the presence of many people of much interest to me, with whom I was able to have a lot of mathematical conversations. While there, I was working on a long term project with R. Harvey and B. Lawson. Using what I learned there during the month, Lawson and I were able to make sizeable progress later in the year. We wrote up our results in a Mittag-Leffler preprint. The Tuesday and Thursday Seminars at the Insitute were very lively, with a lot of audience participation. I also benefited greatly from all the help I got from the librarian and the staff. - Jon Wermer, Brown University The winter I spent at Institut Mittag-Leffer 1991/1992 for the combinatorics program was probably the mathematically most intense and the most satisfying half-year I ever had. I arrived (although it is more than 17 years ago, I do not have to look up the dates) on September 6, 1991, by night-train from Munich via Hamburg. In my luggage I had a finished paper, which was to serve as a chapter for my "Habilitation thesis", and lots of questions - in particular, about homotopy types of subspace arrangements. My days at the Institute started early; I had a first breakfast at my little apartment, then I went up to the "castle", worked in the library, later had tea and a discussion with Volkmar Welker (then a post doc like me, now professor in Marburg). I'd work in the library until some time in the evening, with a lunch break and a walk alongside the lake each day. Probably I had an assigned office that winter, but I spent most of the time reading and writing and thinking at the huge oak table in the upper library, where the books are.  Günter Ziegler in the main library 1991 One afternoon I was playing with cellular models for subspace arrangements, trying to simplify the models by homotopy equivalences. Rade Zivaljevic - a visitor from then war-ridden Yugoslavia, who had arrived a week earlier - looked over my shoulder, probably I showed to him what I was doing, and he recognized: "What you are constructing are homotopy colimits, and there are lemmas and tools available to treat these". From this observation grew my joint work with Rade Zivaljevic, later published in Mathematische Annalen. It's definitely one of the best papers I ever did. My paper with Rade also made up the key chapter for my Habilitation Thesis, which was practically completed and ready for submission in my luggage when on March 31, 1992 I took the night train to Berlin, where I arrived next morning. There my "next life" started. Without the Mittag-Leffler experience, in a number of ways I wouldn't have arrived where I am now. I am so grateful for it. - Günter Ziegler, Technische Universität Berlin My 2 months stay at Institut Mittag-Leffler was an exceptional privilege to meet some first class mathematicians and enjoy hospitality of one of the world's finest mathematical centers. Mittag-Leffler Institute is (as we all know) a castle of mathematics where everything seems possible, every mathematical problem within reach, a place where your first neighbor in the library may turn into a lasting friend and a collaborator in mathematical projects for many years to come.
I sincerely hope that the Institute will be able to proudly continue its noble mission, for the benefit of all mathematicians in the world, for the glory of its founders, and for the pride and joy of its keepers and benefactors. - Rade Zivaljevic, Mathematical Institute SANU, Serbia |
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This page was last updated 2012-01-23 09:13 webmaster@mittag-leffler.se |
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