From: George Byrne & Alan Hindmarsh Date: Wed, 26 Jul 89 13:51:43 EDT Subject: Comments on Dundee N.A. Meeting The 13th Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis, Dundee George D. Byrne Computing and Telecommunications Systems Division Exxon Research and Engineering Company Annandale, NJ 08801 and Alan C. Hindmarsh Computing and Mathematics Research Division, L-316 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808 Livermore, CA 94550 The 13th Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis was held at the University of Dundee, Dundee Scotland, 27 - 30 June 1989. To our knowledge this is the only regularly scheduled, international, numerical analysis conference in the world. There scheduling of this conference and the IMA Conference on Computational Ordinary Differential Equations (London) during successive weeks. (Please see our article on that conference elsewhere in this issue of SIAM News.) Dundee is a colorful blend of the old and the new. For example, in 1689 the Viscount Dundee raised the standard of James VII on Dundee Law, the high hill just behind the headquarters dormitory, overlooking the Firth of Tay. More recently, Dundee was a whaling town. It is now a bustling city with (by American standards) old, stone buildings, modern shopping malls, old churches, a large university, the famous Firth of Tay bridge, and a very friendly, helpful populace. We can think of few other places where a lone woman would guide an obviously bewildered man A lasting memory will be a walk up Dundee Law with a group of very amicable Canadians to watch the beautiful sunset up the Firth of Tay. The lights of the villages sparkled below in the cool, clean air. The dark, Scotch hills formed a sharp, artistic contrast to the sunset and the serene Firth. And this was at 11 PM (2300)! A few of us took advantage of the long-lighted evenings by visiting some of the local pubs to savor the local color and products. The friendly patrons seemed amused by our array of accents: English, Australian, North American, New Zealander, and 1 2 several varieties of Continental European. It is worth noting that there were several entire families who stayed in the headquarters dormitory. It was a pleasant change to see children ranging in age from toddlers, through pre-teens, teenagers, and university ages. There seemed to be plenty to see and to do in and around Dundee. The local tourist information office and the meeting organizers were most helpful. As for the dormitory facilities, they included community pantries for cooking or making tea and coffee. The common bath facilities were separated for females and males, and, like the rest of the dorm, neat and clean. The Scotch breakfasts brought back memories of the table groaning breakfasts of the rural midwestern U.S. The service was outstanding, courteous, and carried out with good humor. The Dundee Numerical Analysis meetings are among the best organized of any conference series, and this last one was fully up to previous standards. The organizers had rather thoroughly planned the registration procedures, lodging arrangements, meal service, bus transportation between residence and conference halls, lecture room setups, and numerous other details. There was out the many necessary organizational tasks, and the staff people were very efficient in all aspects of the meeting. The result was a very smoothly operating meeting with ample opportunities for both formal and informal discussions. About the only obstacle to good interactions that was not under the control of the organizers was some intermittent jack hammering just outside the second floor lecture room. The conference was organized around 16 invited talks, and 96 submitted talks in groups of either three or four parallel sessions. The invited speakers were: Mike Baines (U. Reading) Jim Bramble (Cornell U.) Kevin Burrage (U. Auckland) Tom Coleman (Cornell U.) Peter Deuflhard (Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum) Roger Fletcher (U. Dundee) Bengt Fornberg (Exxon Research & Engineering Co.) Ivan Graham (U. Bath) Nicholas High Tom Russell (U. Colorado) Dan Sorensen (Argonne National Lab.) Alistair Spence (U. Bath), and Alistair Watson (U. Dundee) 3 As might be expected from this roster alone, the topics presented were wide-ranging. Overall, the quality of the talks was quite high, and the invited speakers did an excellent job of conveying their material to an audience with highly varied backgrounds. Several areas seem to be more active than others, including moving finite elements, finite element methods for hyperbolic problems, Runge-Kutta methods, iterative methods for linear algebraic systems, and analysis of special PDEs. Classical methods in PDEs, optimization, linear algebra, and other areas were also well represented. There were several talks on parallel methods, and a few on applications. Two talks included entertaining poetry as well as enlightenment: Burrage's "The Hunting of the Snark" (with the Lewis Carroll poem in the abstract), and Butcher's slightly less authentic "By the Silvery Tay." Of course, a meeting like this is as valuable for the opportunities that it gives to make informal contacts as it is for the formal talks, perhaps even more so. And private discussions seemed to be going on throughout the conference. One unfortunate event during the conference was Professor A. (Ron) Mitchell's suffering a heart attack. Ron has success- fully guided the confernces and helped to make them what they are today. We are pleased to report that he is recovering nicely. We all wish him a speedy recovery and return to his low handicap golf game. The conference banquet was "just lovely," as the Brits might say. John Mason the after dinner speaker, gave a speech laced with the sharp humor that some of us associate with the British Isles. For example, several conference speakers had plugged their forthcoming books, planned conferences, and new journals. John deftly retaliated by announcing the new "Pacific Journal of Slightly Applied Numerical Analysis." One conference speaker had also mentioned his paper "Stiff or Not Stiff, That is the Question." The mythical co-author was H. Amlet. John pointed out other possibilities: F. Letcher, B Ramble,.... It was great fun, aided by a copious supply of good wine that accompanied a dinner of smoked Scotch Salmon, hearty Scotch beef, marvelous fellowship, and a beautiful setting. On the last day the waitress captain asked, "Will ye be comin' back?" Aye.