A message from the president//Brief words from the editor-in-chief

The big European Mathematical Society event of the year is the EMS council meeting to be held in Lisbon, Portugal on June 27–28, 2026. This is the big biennial meeting where our members, both society and individual members, will send delegates to help to set the direction of the EMS in the next two years. I am looking forward to this chance to interact with our members, and I hope many delegates will be able to attend. At every council we elect new representatives for four-year terms on the EMS Executive Committee. This coming council is particularly important as we will be electing a new president. My term as president will be coming to an end with this calendar year, and I am looking forward to meeting the new president elected by the council. I will be working closely with the new president-elect after the council to secure a continued successful running of the EMS and a successful transition of the presidency.

The really big mathematical event of the year is the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to be held in Philadelphia in July. This will be an occasion to meet mathematicians from across the world and to celebrate the great achievements of mathematics and mathematicians. As is well known, the last ICM to be held in Saint Petersburg was canceled because of the Russian war on Ukraine. Unfortunately, this year concerns have been raised once again about the political situation and the safety of participants traveling to the United States. While we fully acknowledge the validity of these concerns the EMS is supporting the IMU and the local organizers of the ICM in their continued efforts to create a safe, inclusive, and interesting congress. The EMS will have a stand at the ICM shared with EMS Press and zbMATH Open. My personal opinion is that the European Mathematical Society should be active in science politics and in the goal of achieving academic freedom worldwide, not in world politics more generally. We should work for worldwide collaborations among mathematicians. We should, when possible, break barriers and not create them. For this reason, I have decided to participate in the ICM and to represent the EMS at the IMU General Assembly to be held in New York just before the ICM. I am looking forward to going. I would be sorry to miss this or any other opportunity to celebrate mathematics.

Nevertheless, I am writing this with a bit of apprehension. The current state of the world is unfortunately very frightening and unstable. When I first became president the former president, Volker Mehrmann, told me that my term could only be easier than his because he had to deal with both COVID and the war in Ukraine. While my presidency has not been affected by something as directly life changing as a pandemic the political situation is probably worse now and even more complicated and unstable. As I am writing this message the war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Iran just started a few days ago. The situation may look very different by the time you read this and even more so as we approach summer. I sincerely hope it will not affect the congress in Philadelphia too much and that we will have a very successful gathering.

Let me end this message on a positive note. I hope many of you have enjoyed the EMS Lecture Series on Mathematics Education⁠¹⁠https://euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lecture-series-on-mathematics-education-190 moderated by Tom Crawford. If you could not follow the first three by Anna Stokke, Nuno Crato & Tim Surma, and Hung-Hsi Wu you can still watch them on our YouTube channel.⁠²⁠https://www.youtube.com/@EuropeanMathematicalSociety/streams I encourage you to do so. The next lecture is by Sarah Powell on April 10.

Finally, I am looking forward to meeting many of you as delegates or guests at the council in Lisbon in June.

Jan Philip Solovej President of the EMS

Dear readers of the EMS Magazine,

In this issue, you will find many interesting contributions in the usual columns on discussions, societies, education, and book reviews, as well as another article by one of the 2024 EMS Prize winners, this time written by Tom Hutchcroft.

Moreover, with the current issue a new editor is joining the editorial board: Matteo Petrera, who will take care of the Zentralblatt column. A short biographical note about him can be found at the end of the issue. I would like to thank the former editor, Octavio Paniagua Taboada, for his superb work and dedication during his eight years of service on the Magazine’s editorial board. I am also grateful to Matteo Petrera for accepting to devote part of his time to the Magazine.

Finally, it is very important for me to emphasize that with this issue the Magazine joins the celebration of the International Day of Mathematics,⁠³⁠https://www.idm314.org whose theme for 2026 is: Mathematics and Hope. In this regard I invite you to take a look at the articles: “The Math Solidarity Platform” by Emine Yıldırım and “On the European Solidarity Committee of the EMS” by Alice Fialowski, as well as at the Magazine’s cover illustration by A. B. Araújo.

Mathematics, with its universal language can be understood as a bridge: a structure that connects what seems distant, fragmented, or even incompatible. It connects cultures, disciplines, generations, and ideas. In doing so, it becomes a source of hope. Each generation builds upon the discoveries of those before it. This continuity offers hope because it situates us within a long human story of inquiry and progress. Knowledge is not lost; it is transmitted, refined, expanded. We are not starting from nothing, we are building forward. Mathematical collaboration creates communities of shared reasoning. It connects minds across borders, ideas across centuries, abstraction and reality, challenge and solution.

Hope arises wherever connection replaces isolation.

Donatella Donatelli Editor-in-chief

1. ¹

   https://euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lecture-series-on-mathematics-education-190

2. ²

   https://www.youtube.com/@EuropeanMathematicalSociety/streams

3. ³

   https://www.idm314.org