Sponsored Research In Mathematician’s Holiday

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30998, 2 March 1966, Page 18

Sponsored Research In Mathematician’s Holiday

Professor G. M. Petersen, who holds the second chair of mathematics at the University of Canterbury. spent the long vacation on research overseas which was independently sponsored and financed without any tags about producing practical results.

With Professor G. Lorentz at the University of Syracuse in the United States he worked on a United States Army and Air Force “contract” doing fundamental research on certain properties of divergent series.. He said the work had no immediate value for the armed forces. They simply appreciated the value of continued mathematical inquiry.

Professor Petersen then visited the University of Swansea in Wales, where he was formerly on the staff, and continued research there. He said the mathematics and physics department had a

“nice new block” with three storeys and a high tower structure. Library and other faciilties were good. The Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam. Holland, was his third assignment. This, he said, was supported entirely by businessmen. There was a small resident staff, others from the University of Amsterdam working part time, and visitors were called in casually. This was a grand environment, Professor Petersen said, because the centre had excellent computer and library facilities, its own printing department, and stimulating company.

Professor Petersen said this was an enlightened idea: more so because it had been in existence for 21 years. Britain had nothing like it and such centres wer? relatively new in the United States. Professor Petersen gave lectures at the centre