General Meeting Minutes for 2001

A General Meeting of the British Mathematical Colloquium was held in the Dalrymple Hall Bar Lounge, University of Glasgow at 8.15 pm on 10 April 2001.

Chair: Robert Odoni, Secretary: Richard Steiner. Approximately 40 people attended the meeting.

  1. The minutes of the Annual General Meeting held in Leeds on 18 April 2000 were accepted.

  2. Under matters arising the future organisation of the BMC was raised, but discussion was deferred to item 8 below.

  3. The accounts of the 52nd BMC were accepted.

  4. Colin Rourke reported on the 54th BMC in Warwick (joint meeting with BAMC), 7 - 12 April 2002. There would be a single meeting, not two successive meetings, and the fee structure would encourage attendance at the entire meeting. The first two days would be pure, the last two applied, and the third would be an overlap day consisting of three plenary lectures, two discussions, a banquet and after-dinner entertainment. Eleven plenary speakers had been invited.

  5. Robert Curtis reported that funding for the 55th BMC (Birmingham, 2003) had been obtained from the LMS.

  6. David Armitage invited the 2004 BMC to Queen's University Belfast, and the invitation was accepted by acclamation.

  7. Graham Jameson was elected to the Scientific Committee. The complete membership is: David Armitage, Tony Carbery, Robert Curtis, John Greenlees,, Graham Jameson, Martin Mathieu, Robert Odoni, Steve Pride, Helen Robinson, Colin Rourke, Tony Scholl, Balazs Szendroi, Michael Weiss, Robert Wilson.

  8. Since 1989 the reserve fund has been held by the EMS. Neil Dickson, the Treasurer of the EMS, explained that for legal reasons this is no longer possible. Ben Garling on behalf of the LMS made a proposal, which was accepted with slight modification as follows: the money in the fund shall be transferred to the LMS, and in return the LMS will underwrite each BMC to an amount which will be the current value of the fund indexed to inflation. (The LMS will also consider annual requests for support as at present.)

    The Scientific Committee had not been able to circulate proposals aimed at improving long-range planning, as had been suggested at last year's Annual General Meeting. It was instructed to set up a committee to circulate proposals before next year's BMC,or alternatively to ask the governing bodies of the LMS and EMS to arrange this.

  9. The organisers of the 53rd BMC were thanked for their work.

Minutes signed by Richard Steiner (undated).