edited by
D. Coray, F. Furinghetti,
H. Gispert, B.R. Hodgson, G. Schubring

One Hundred Years of LfEnseignement Mathematique:
Moments of Mathematics Education in the Twentieth Century
Proceedings of the EM-ICMI Symposium ,(Geneva, 20-22 October 2000)

LfEnseignement Mathematique Monograph no. 39
(ISBN 2-940264-06-6)
softbound; 336 pages, 2003;

It was in 1899 that Henri Fehr (Geneva) and Charles-Ange Laisant (Paris) founded the international journal L'Enseignement Mathematique. The form that the celebratory symposium took was a historical survey of developments in mathematics education at key periods in the 20th century followed by a short discussion of the manner in which mathematics education might meet the demands of societies today and in the near future.

The symposium demonstrated how over the century the emphasis shifted from discussions of the mathematics to be taught to an elite, to the needs of a wider range of students and of society. It reminded us of the way in which two generations had tried to make enormous changes in the content of school mathematics and methods of teaching it. It gave us an opportunity to see where these earlier efforts had not been wholly successful and challenged us to determine why. With such an understanding we should be better equipped to tackle both the problems that now face us and those which will arise in the future.

Table of contents

Introduction: Daniel Coray - Bernard R. Hodgson
L'Enseignement Mathematique: birth and stakes
Fulvia Furinghetti: Mathematical instruction in an international perspective: the contribution of the journal L'Enseignement Mathematique
Gert Schubring: L'Enseignement Mathematique and the first International Commission (IMUK): the emergence of international communication and cooperation
Gila Hanna: Journals of mathematics education, 1900-2000
Reaction: Jean-Pierre Bourguignon
Geometry
Rudolph Bkouche: La geometrie dans les premieres annees de la revue L'Enseignement Mathematique
Geoffrey Howson: Geometry: 1950-70
Colette Laborde: Geometrie - Periode 2000 et apres
Reaction: Nicolas Rouche
Analysis
Jean-Pierre Kahane: L'enseignement du calcul differentiel et integral au debut du vingtieme siecle
Man-Keung Siu: Learning and teaching of analysis in the mid twentieth century: a semi-personal observation
Lynn Steen: Analysis 2000: challenges and opportunities
Reaction: Michele Artigue
Applications of mathematics: mathematics as a service subject
Philippe Nabonnand: Les debats autour des applications des mathematiques dans les reformes de l'enseignement secondaire au debut du vingtieme siecle
Helene Gispert: Applications: les mathematiques comme discipline de service dans les annees 1950-1960
Mogens Niss: Applications of mathematics '2000'
Reaction: Gerhard Wanner
Perspectives for mathematics education
Ubiratan D'Ambrosio: Stakes in mathematics education for the societies of today and tomorrow
Jeremy Kilpatrick: Scientific solidarity today and tomorrow
Reaction: Hyman Bass

Christophe Sabot, Universite Paris VI, France

Spectral Properties of Self-Similar Lattices and Iteration of Rational Maps

Description

In this text, the author considers discrete Laplace operators defined on lattices based on finitely ramified self-similar sets and their continuous analogs defined on the self-similar sets. He focuses on the spectral properties of these operators. The basic example is the lattice based on the Sierpinski gasket. He introduces a new renormalization map that appears to be a rational map defined on a smooth projective variety. (More precisely, this variety is isomorphic to a product of three types of Grassmannians: complex Grassmannians, Lagrangian Grassmannian, and orthogonal Grassmannians.) He relates some characteristics of the dynamics of its iterates with some characteristics of the spectrum of the operator. Specifically, he gives an explicit formula for the density of states in terms of the Green current of the map, and he relates the indeterminacy points of the map with the so-called Neumann-Dirichlet eigenvalues which lead to eigenfunctions with compact support on the unbounded lattice. Depending on the asymptotic degree of the map, he can prove drastically different spectral properties of the operators. The formalism is valid for the general class of finitely ramified self-similar sets.

Contents

Introduction
Definitions and basic results
Preliminaries
The renormalization map. Expression of the density of states
Analysis of the psh function $G_{\vert\pi^{-1}(\mathbb{L}^G)}$
Examples
Remarks, questions and conjecture
Appendix
Bibliography

Details:

Series: Memoires de la Societe Mathematique de France, Number: 92
Publication Year: 2003
ISBN: 2-85629-133-3
Paging: 104 pp.
Binding: Softcover

Claire Voisin

Theorie de Hodge et geometrie algebrique complexe

Expected publication date is August 20, 2003

Description

This book uses material from both complex differential geometry and complex algebraic geometry.

The first part of the book presents the fundamental results of Hodge theory, including a few preliminary chapters on Kahler geometry and sheaf cohomology. It concludes with the development of the notion of Hodge structure and the study of its variation with respect to the complex structure.

The second part is more advanced and presents applications of Hodge theory to complex algebraic geometry. It starts with a study of the topology of families of algebraic varieties, both from a classical and modern point of view, and then focuses on the applications of the theory of infinitesimal variations of Hodge structure. The last chapters are devoted to the presentation of the relations between Hodge theory and algebraic cycles, whose conjectural part is the famous Bloch-Beilinson conjecture.

This book will be useful for Ph.D. students and for researchers interested in modern methods of differential and algebraic geometry. Readers will find here a complete didactic exposition and an up-to-date presentation of applications of Hodge theory to the study of algebraic cycles.

Contents

Introduction
Partie I. Preliminaires
Fonctions holomorphes de plusieurs variables
Varietes complexes
Metriques kahleriennes
Faisceaux et cohomologie
Partie II. La decomposition de Hodge
Formes harmoniques et cohomologie
Cas des varietes kahleriennes
Structures de Hodge et polarisations
Complexes de de Rham holomorphes et suites spectrales
Partie III. Variations de structure de Hodge
Familles de deformations
Variation de structure de Hodge
Partie IV. Cycles et classes de cycles
Classes de Hodge
Cohomologie de Deligne-Beilinson et application d'Abel-Jacobi
Partie V. Topologie des varietes algebriques
Le theoreme de Lefschetz sur les sections hyperplanes
Etudes pinceaux de Lefschetz
Monodromie
Suite spectrale de Leray
Partie VI. Variation de structure de Hodge
Transversalite et applications
Filtration de Hodge des hypersurfaces
Fonctions normales et invariants infinitesimaux
Travaux de Nori
Partie VII. Cycles algebriques
Groupes de Chow
Le theoreme de Mumford et ses generalisations
La conjecture de Bloch et ses generalisations
Bibliographie
Index

Details:

Series: Cours Specialises--Collection SMF, Number: 10
Publication Year: 2003
ISBN: 2-85629-129-5
Paging: 595 pp.
Binding: Softcover