Electronic Journal of Differential Equations, Conference 04, 2000.

Proceedings of Mathematical Physics and Quantum Field Theory, a symposium celebrating the seventieth birthday of Eyvind H. Wichmann.

Foreword

In June 1999, sixty physicists and mathematicians from around the world gathered for a three-day symposium in honor of the seventieth birthday of Eyvind H. Wichmann, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.  The international symposium, held 11-13 June 1999 at the Berkeley Physics Department, centered around mathematical physics and related topics.  A total of 36 talks were presented by ten of Professor Wichmann's former students and 26 other distinguished participants.  (Whether the symposium was held in the correct year is another matter.)

The conference participants enjoyed the ever-beautiful Berkeley campus and environs.  A banquet was held in connection with the symposium, highlighted by an after-dinner speech by Professor Joseph Sucher of the University of Maryland, College Park.  (Do not miss the text of the speech, found in these conference proceedings, which provides a wonderful glimpse into the happenings at Columbia University when Sucher and Wichmann were students.)  An outing to Muir Woods followed the conference on Saturday.  Photographs of the conference can be found at www.math.unt.edu/~warchall/EHWsymposium/photos.htm, although for some reason most of the photos of the Muir Woods outing participants had a distinct greenish tinge and are not published.

Eyvind Wichmann has directly supervised the Ph.D. theses of twenty mathematical physicists:

and has influenced countless others through his teaching.  His distinguished research career has involved many collaborators, and his devotion to deep thought and profound understanding has gained him many admirers.  It is indicative of the high regard in which Eyvind Wichmann is held that all sixty conference participants, who hailed from Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Sweden, and across the United States, participated in the conference at their own expense; none received financial support from the symposium.  We thank them all for making the symposium a great success.

The scientific talks presented at the symposium were:

The manuscripts in these conference proceedings comprise a subset of these talks, together with a contribution from Professor Bert Schroer, Freie Universitaet Berlin, who was unable to attend, and the dinner speech by Joseph Sucher. 

We were saddened to learn that Professor James Crichton passed away in Seattle on 18 December 1999.  He is fondly remembered.

Professors Peter Hislop and Henry Warchall served as conference organizers while Professor Eugene Commins coordinated local arrangements.  We gratefully acknowledge the facilities and refreshments provided by the University of California, Berkeley, Physics Department.  We thank all the authors who took the extra time and effort to provide their talks in a form suitable for electronic publication.

Special Issue Editor

Henry Warchall
Department of Mathematics
University of North Texas

Back to the Table of Contents for the Wichmann Symposium.

Go to the Proceedings of Conferences: Electron. J. Diff. Eqns.