Report on the International Symposium
on History of Chinese Mathematics

Joe Dauben and Karen Parshall

The International Symposium on History of Chinese Mathematics was held on Tuesday, 27 August, 2002 at the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing in connection with the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). Co-sponsored by the ICHM, the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), and the Institute for History of Natural Sciences (CAS), the day-long symposium was organized by Joseph Dauben (USA), LI Wenlin (China), and LIU Dun (CHINA) and was comprised of six lectures given by specialists from Canada, China, France, Singapore, and Taiwan. In particular, the symposium, which was made an official part of the ICM by the ICM Organizing Committee, included a lecture by WU Wenjun, the President of the ICM, which drew very large crowds to the symposium.

Well over 200 people attended the morning session, which included the presentation to Lam Lay Yong (Singapore) of the Kenneth O. May Medal for outstanding contributions to the history of mathematics. In the afternoon, when Professor WU gave his talk, the Museum set up a closed-circuit television broadcast. This enabled the overflow audience of several hundred more to watch the afternoon session in the Museum's IMAX theater. WANG Yusheng, the Museum's Director, also provided a very impressive buffet reception after the symposium, which was a very pleasant end to what was a busy but very successful program.