ISIAM-The Indian Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics was established on the occasion of a symposium on “Differential Equations and Industrial Applications” during the last week of September, 1990 at the department of Mathematics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India. Professor Abul Hasan Siddiqi was the Chairman and Director of the symposium. Professors Helmut Neunzert, Martin Brokate and Rene Lozi were invited speakers. More than 50 delegates including Professors H.P. Dikshit, P. Achutan, S. Kesavan, Adimurty, (Mrs.) Ravinderan, M.U.Siddiqui, V.P. Saxena, R. Lanka, G.C. Sharma and R.C. Gupta participated. The society is a registered NGO.
The aims and objectives of the Society are:
- To popularize and promote the teaching and research of those branches of Mathematics (like Numerical and Variational Techniques, Mathematical modeling, Algorithms and Coding theory, to be identified by the Executive Committee on the recommendation of the Expert Committee of the Society) which play very important role in the Industrial, Scientific and Technological problems.
- To promote the applications of mathematical modeling and mathematical techniques for the solution of problems in science, technology and industry.
- To identify the challenging problems faced by Scientists and Technologists in Indian Laboratories, factories and defence organizations
- To establish cooperation among such organizations and advanced centers for this field like ICTP, Trieste, Italy, National institute of Numerical Analysis, Paria, Institute of Mathematics Applications, U. S. A. , Research Institute, Montreal, Canada, European Consortium of Industrial Mathematics, INRIA, France, Centers for Industrial Mathematics in Kaiserslautern, Oxford, Linz etc.
- To identify frontline research areas which are of vital importance from applications point of view and to organize seminars/ symposiums/ conferences/ workshops for the benefit of academicians from developing countries, especially from the Indian subcontinent through the financial support of Indian funding agencies and that of International funding agencies like UNESCO, IAEO, ICTP and Third World Academy
After long deliberations, it was decided to establish the Indian Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Professor A.H. Siddiqi was authorized to draft the constitution in consultation with the founder members, to enroll members and to get the society registered. The annual conference of the Indian Mathematical Society was held at Aligarh during the last week of December, 1991. He was the Local Secretary. On this occasion, a meeting of all enrolled members was convened and the constitution of the society was approved. The society organized its first symposium during this conference. Professor Tery Rockafeller, U.S.A., and Professor Alain Bensoussan, President INRIA, France, were the guests of honor on this occasion. Professor J.N. Kapur was unanimously elected President and Professor Siddiqi was elected Secretary and they were authorized to nominate office-bearers and council members. On this occasion, it was also decided that the society would organize an International Workshop of Industrial Mathematics in collaboration with the Aligarh Muslim University, Academic Staff College and Hamdard University, Delhi from 9-15 December, 1992. Although there were a lot of turmoil prior to this conference, especially in Northern India, the organizers still managed the workshop. 60 university and college teachers from different parts of the country participated in this activity and interacted with speakers from Australia, Japan and U.S.A. The workshop was inaugurated by Mr. V.C. Shukla the then Cabinet Minister of Water Management, Government of India.
The first annual conference of the society was held at Roorkee University, Roorkee in February, 1993. Professor R.C. Gupta was the Organizing Secretary. The proceedings of the conference were published.
The Second conference of the society was held at Anna Engineering University, Chennai during the last week of February, 1994, Professor (Mrs.) Prabha Mani R.Patil was the Local Secretary. The Vice-Chancellor, Anna University presided over the inaugural function.
The Third Annual Conference of the society was organized in May, 1995 at Calcutta University and Professor D. K. Sinha was the organizing secretary. Several interesting topics like image processing, modelling of traffic, modelling of chemical reactions were discussed in detail. Professor D.K. Sinha and Professor N.K. Gupta were requested to accept the posts of Vice-President and Joint Secretary respectively. Both accepted the request in spite of the fact that in the subsequent months, Professor Sinha took over as the Vice-Chancellor of Vishwa Bharti University and Professor Gupta was elected President of the Indian Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and President of the Indian Society of Mechanical Engineers.
The Fourth conference was organized in April 1996 at Jamia Millia, New Delhi. Professor Khalil Ahmad was the Local Secretary, Professor M.B. Mathur, Vice-Chairman, the University Grants Commission was the Chief Guest at the inaugural function. Professor H.P. Dikshit presided over the inaugural session. Professor Helmut Neunzert delivered key note address. Besides many symposiums a session on teaching of Mathematics presided over by the Director NCERT, Professor Maheshwari was quite thought-provoking. Participants liked very much talks delivered by a group of speakers from IIT Delhi (especially that of Dr. Anand Jagota presently a Senior Research Scientist, Dupont Central Research and Development, Wilimton, U.S.A.) who were invited in a symposium organized by Professor N.K. Gupta. The proceedings of this conference was published by Narosa. This contains very informative articles.
Prof. Siddiqi was authorized to approach the International Centre of Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, to organize Summer/Autumn/Winter schools on Industrial Mathematics as usual whose beneficiaries would be participants from the Third World countries. He met Professor A. Virasoro, Director ICTP in November 1997 in this connection and the school was organized in September/October 1999. There were many participants from India in this school.
The International Conference on Functional Analysis with Applications was organized at Aligarh Muslim University with the financial support of UGC, CSIR, DST, NBHM and ICTP. Many distinguished experts from India and abroad such as Professors Husain, Zelasko, Sanchez, Saxon, Oettali, Ben-El-Mechaiekh, Brokate, Evans, Kesavan, Srikant, Adimurti participated in the Theme. The testimony of the success of this conference is that some selected papers presented on this occasion were published in Pitman Research Notes in mathematics Series Vol. 377. The Roorkee group also organized the conference and published its proceedings by Narosa, New Delhi. As a result of the AMU Conference, some Functional Analysts started taking interest in its industrial applications.
A workshop on Industrial Mathematics was organized on the IISC Campus, Bangalore in January, 1998. A mini workshop was organized in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in April, 1998 in which people from industrial organizations and University System presented their points of view. Professors Karmeshu, C. Mohan, V.P. Saxena, G.C. Sharma, M. Rasulova of Tashkent, and Dr. (Mrs.) P. Manchanda were among the speakers from the University System. Professor Khalil Ahmad organized this workshop. Representatives of the Research and Development Division (Indian Railways, Lucknow), Paper Industry, Saharanpur, ONGC, Dehradun and Tata Research Consultancy et al. participated actively in the deliberations.
The 5th Annual Conference of the Society was organized at the Institute of Technology, Bhopal (Maulana Azad Regional Engineering College) in the first week of Sept., 1998. An interesting feature was a lecture by Professor V.S. Rekhi, Director of the National Institute of Law at Bhopal, on the role of mathematics in the legal system. It is a very exciting theme for persons interested in the applications of mathematics in other areas. In July 1999, a symposium of similar theme was organized in Edinburgh during the 5th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics in which several distinguished legal experts of U.K. participated, besides some eminent mathematicians like Professor Michael Atiyah. This is a vast field to work in. Professor M. Kumar was the Organizing Secretary of the Bhopal Conference.
A workshop on Industrial Mathematics was organized at the Convention Hall of Hamdard University during 23-27 February, 1999 in collaboration with Roorki University. The University Grants Commission kindly agreed to treat it as its North Zone Conference in emerging areas. 28 Chairmen/their Representatives participated in the workshop along with 30 other participants. Professors Kapur, Neunzert, Engle, Schachermayer, Rudraiah,, Sitaramaiya, Rajsonov, Eschman, et al. were speakers. Professor C. Mohan, Prof. Pammy Manchanda (now Professor) and Prof. Afsar Alam (now Dr. and Professor of Computer Science) made this workshop a great success. Deliberations of the workshop caught the attention of National dailies like The Hindu. Dr. Mashelkar, Director General CSIR inaugurated the conference. The Inaugural Session was presided over by the Vice-Chancellor, Hamdard University, Professor Alauddin Ahmad.
A meeting of life members and well wishers of the Society was held in New Delhi at India Habitat Centre in 1999. Among notable participants were Professors J. N. Kapur (on Chair), A.H. Siddiqi, N.K. Gupta, V.P. Saxena, R.S. Pathak, Z.A. Taqvi, Sunder Lal, V.K. Parashar, P.K. Jain, MZR Khan, Pammy Manchanda. The President, Professor J.N. Kapur was authorized to take action to accelerate the activities of the society and to actively involve more people. Professor N.K. Gupta was requested to take appropriate steps to start a journal of the society. Professor C. Mohan was assigned the task of raising the number of members and motivating organizations and individuals to become patrons of the society. Professor V.P. Saxena and Professor Karmeshu were requested to take appropriate measures to establish liaison with academicians and organizations/agencies/companies with research and development divisions. Professors V.K. Parashar, Sunderlal, R.S. Pathak, K.R. Paradasni and P.K. Jain were requested to raise corpus for the society. Professor Siddiqi was authorized to establish working relationship with national and international societies. Prof. Pammy Manchanda was nominated Joint Secretary of the Society by the President. The appointment was subsequently ratified by the appropriate bodies.
The society was affiliated to the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) in May, 1999. Prof. Siddiqi attended the meeting on behalf of the Society held in Edinburgh on 12 July, 1999. A detailed proposal was submitted to the President, ICIAM for holding a conference at Delhi in 2007 which was considered in its meeting held at Paris on 27th May, 2000. Our counterpart societies in Switzerland and Canada were other contenders to hold this conference. The final decision was taken in May 2001 in a meeting held at Helsinski on 27th May, 2001 and Zurich was the choice. ICIAM-2007 was held in July 2007 at ETH, Zurich. On our initiative NBHM supported participation of 60 persons to this conference.
The society published several Newsletters and provided valuable information for teaching and research of industrial and applied mathematics. The society also tried to highlight the importance and relevance of this field through national print media. It has succeeded in creating an award called Dr Zakir Husain Award for distinguished Industrial and Applied Mathematicians to be awarded during the Inaugural functions of conferences of the society.
An International Conference combined with 6th Biennial Conference was organized at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar during 21-25, January 2001. Besides, more than 20 distinguished industrial and applied mathematicians from abroad a large number of Indian academicians attended the conference. Dr. Pammy Manchanda was the Local Secretary. It was a very well organized conference. The foreign speakers included Professors P.L. Butzer, Zuhair Nashed, Noel G. Barton, Graeme Fair Weather, H.D. Mittelmann, Rene Lozi, J.R. Higgins, R.L. Stens, M. Kocvara and Zafer Aslan. The proceedings of this conference have been published in two parts one by Kluwer Academic Publishers and other by Anamaya Publisher. The society organized two symposia each in 3 parts during 5th International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics held at Sydney, July 2003. The Proceeding of these symposia have been published by Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group 2005; with KM Furati, Zuhair Nashed, Abul Hasan Siddiqi as editors. There were 35 contributors from 16 different countries.
7th Biennial National Conference of ISIAM combined with an, International Conference was held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, 4-7, Dec. 2004. Hon’ble Shri Arjun Singh, HRD Minister, Government of India & Hon’ble Shri MAA Fatemi, HRD Minister of State, Government of India graced the Inaugural Function. Engr. Nadeem Tarin, Project Manager, Al-Terais hosted a lunch in the honor of delegates. A detailed report is available at www.siam-india.in. Dr Zakir Husain Award on this was occasion was presented to Prof. Dr. Helmut Neunzert of Germany.
8th Biennial SIAM conference was organized at Jammu University during 31 March – 2 April. Dr Zakir Husain award was presented to Professor Dr K R Sreenivasan, at the Inaugural function by LT General (retd.) Sinha, Governor, Jammu & Kashmir. Professors F. Schipp, S. Fridli; Prof. H Mittelmann, Prof. R Lozi; Prof N K Govil, Prof Zafar Aslan, Prof H P Dikshit were among notable speakers. Prof Sreenivasan delivered a spell binding lecture after the inaugural function.
An important feature of the conference was a lively symposium on teaching of calculus in which besides above distinguished professors and Prof. K R Sreenivasan, Director ICTP, a good number of participants from the audience made valuable suggestions. These ideas and suggestions have been incorporated in book written, by Prof. A H Siddiqi, Prof. P. Manchanda (GNDU, Amritsar) and Prof. M Brokate of Technical University of Munich.
9th biennial national conference combined with an international conference on modeling og engineering and technological problems (ICMETP) was organized at B.M.A.S. Engineering College, Sharda Group Of Institutions, Agra. More than three dozen distinguished scholars from abroad besides two hundred Indian delegates participated in this conference. Prof Roddam Narasimha (FRS) and Prof H.P. Dikshit, were presented Dr. Zakir Hussain award respectively for the years 2007 and 2008. Prof. A.R. Kidwai, Governor of Haryana was the chief guest. The proceeding of the conference has been published by the American Institute Of Physics, Philadelphia, USA in July 2009.
The society has organized the satellite conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians, 2010 on “Mathematics in Science and Technology” during 14-17 August 2010 at India Habitat Center, New Delhi. The representatives of the member societies of International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematician also met in New Delhi on 14 August, 2010 and they also interacted with participants of the satellite conference. A workshop on inverse problems and wavelets with applications to science and technology was also organized. The proceedings of this conference has been published by the World Scientific Publisher, Singapore in June 2011.
It will not be out of place to mention that with the meager financial resources of the society (interest of the fixed deposit of the amount of membership fee), it was impossible to organize the above mentioned activities without generous financial support of some voluntary organizations like the Duty Society, Aligarh Muslim University, Nadim Tarin Society, a trust established by Professor J.N. Kapur and founders of Sharda Group Of Institutions (SGI).