Handling editor: Yingfei Yi

 

by Jianhong Wu and Huaiping Zhu

 

In the colorful fall of 2008, from September 24 to 28, the International Conference on Infinite Dimensional Dynamical Systems was held at York University, Toronto. Among the 80 participants from all over the world, 48 invited speakers presented their work which covers wide range of topics of infinite dimensional dynamical systems generated by parabolic partial differential equations, hyperbolic partial differential equations, solitary equations, lattice differential equations, delay differential equations, and stochastic differential equations.

The organizers were:

• John Mallet-Paret, Brown University
• Jianhong Wu, York University
• Yingfei Yi, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Huaiping Zhu, York University

 

Infinite dimensional dynamical systems are generated by evolutionary equations, describing the evolutions in time of systems whose states are described by infinite dimensional phase spaces. Studying the long-term behaviors of such systems aids in the understanding of spatiotemporal pattern formation and global continuation. It has been a motivation for new developments in the mathematical theory of nonlinear analysis. It has also been used in understanding applications in physical, chemical and life sciences. The invited speakers each gave 40 minute talks. Their contributions will be published in a special volume of Fields Institute Communications. For a full schedule, see the conference website:
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/08-09/dynsys/

The conference was in honor of George Sell's 70th birthday.

The conference was dedicated to Professor George Sell from University of Minnesota on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Sell's work is in the fields of non-autonomous dynamical systems, skew-product flows, invariant manifolds theory, infinite dimensional dynamical systems, approximation dynamics, and fluid flows. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan in 1962. He joined the faculty of the School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota in 1964, following two years of Benjamin Pierce Instructorship at Harvard University. At Minnesota, he was the co-founder of The Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (IMA) and the founding director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center. He is the author of nine books, over one hundred research articles, has served on the boards of several other journals, and is the founding editor of the Journal of Dynamics and Differential Equations. Sell is a recipient of honorary doctorate degree from University of St. Petersburg and an invited address at the 1982 International Congress of Mathematicians.

Shui-Nee Chow chaired the MITACS public lecture.

George Sell giving the MITACS public lecture. The last slide has one sentence "May you live in excited times!"

At the conference, Sell delivered a public lecture titled "An evolution in evolutionary equations," sponsored by Mathematics for Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS). Shui-Nee Chow chaired the public lecture, briefly summarizing Sell's mathematical contributions. Sell presented some of the history of last fifty years of the theory of infinite dimensional dynamical systems. Inspired by a conversation with a Chinese scholar, Sell ended his lecture with the line "May you live in excited times!"

Gerry Sell and John Mallet-Paret give personal anecdotes of George Sell's life and work.

A special feature presentation was jointly given by John Mallet-Paret and Gerry Sell, relating personal anecdotes both from George's mathematics and from his life: participants got a glimpse of the evolution of evolution equations and the dynamics of the study of dynamical systems. A birthday banquet of more than 80 participants included a birthday cake with candles.

Our best wishes to Professor George Sell!