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SU hosts historical meeting of numerical and applied mathematicians
Author: Nick Hale
Published: 05/04/2016

The first SANUM* meeting came into existence in 1975 when two eminent mathematicians, Prof. Lothar Collatz (1910-1990) from Germany and Dr Fritz John (1920-1994) from the United States of America, happened to visit South Africa at the same time.

A number of local researchers used the opportunity to organise a meeting at the (then) University of Natal, at which a total of ten papers were presented. From here the meeting grew in strength, with numerous famous numerical and applied mathematicians passing through.

Aside from missing a single year (1996) and on one occasion (1997) being a special session of a larger conference, the meeting has been held annually. This makes 2016 the 40th occurrence of this major event on the calendar of South African numerical and applied mathematics.

The organiser of the very first SANUM meeting, Prof. Gerhard Joubert from the Technical University of Clausthal, also attended the event and presented the after-dinner speech. Prof. Joubert is also a SU mathematics alumnus.

The 2016 organisers were Dr Nick Hale, Prof. Ben Herbst and Prof. André Weideman, all from the Division of Applied Mathematics at Stellenbosch University.

The 2017 meeting will be held at the University of the Witwatersrand.

*South African symposium of Numerical and Applied Mathematics (SANUM) http://sanum.github.io