A brief history of the Institute of Mathematics

The Institute of Mathematics of Chinese Academy of Sciences was inaugurated on July 1^st ,1952. The founding director is Professor Loo-keng Hua and his term was up to 1982. The following directors are respectively: Academician Qiken Lu (1979-1982, deputy director in charge of institute’s daily affairs), Academician Yuan Wang (1983-1986), Academician Lo Yang (1987-1994), Prof. Ruiling Long (1995-1996),  Prof. Bingren Li (1997-1998),  Prof. Yuefei Wang (1999-2002),  Academician Xiangyu Zhou (2003-2012),  Prof. Zaijiu Shang (2012-2017), Academician Ping Zhang (2017-2022)，Prof.Xiaoping Xu (2022).  The current director is Prof. Baohua Fu since 2022.

From the beginning, the Institute has kept the strategy of developing pure and applied mathematics together. It successively split into several independent research institutions later on according to the Nation’s needs for the development of economy and sciences. Moreover, the Institute itself has readjusted research goals several times. Since the Nation’s opening-up policy started in 1978, the Institute mainly focuses on researches in pure mathematics, and also develops closely-related fields in applied mathematics, computational mathematics and computer science.

In December 1998, the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science (AMSS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was founded with the integration of the Institute of Mathematics, the Institute of Applied Mathematics, the Institute of Systems Science and the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing. Academician Lo Yang from the Institute of Mathematics was its founding president.

In the past seventy years, the Institute has made fundamental contributions in the Nation’s mathematical research and education. Members from the Institute have won many important awards, including three First Class Prizes of National Natural Science Awards (the theory of functions of several complex variables over classical domains by Loo-Keng Hua, studies on characteristic classes and embedding classes by Wen-Tsun Wu, studies on the Goldbach conjecture by Jingrun Chen and Yuan Wang et al.), and a dozen Second Class Prizes of National Natural Science Awards, and several important international prizes and awards.

Currently the Institute of Mathematics consists of 67 research members (including  6 academicians, 36 full professors, 23 associated professors and 8 assistant professors). Sixteen of them received The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and fourteen of them are enrolled in The National Youth Talent Program.

Activities in the Institute of Mathematics

The Morningside Center of Mathematics is directed by Prof. S. T. Yau and Prof. Lo Yang, which provides an excellent platform for international collaborations and activities. Member seminars are held every Thursday morning and several conferences/workshops are organized every year.

The Loo-keng Hua Lectures were set up in 1999, which was held every November to commemorate Prof. Loo-keng Hua. Two lectures are given every year by outstanding mathematicians. In 2019, AMSS launched Loo-keng Hua outstanding visiting scholar program to invite top mathematicians to visit the Institute for one month. The first scholar is Prof. Carlos Kenig, who came in summer 2019 and gave a series of lectures. Due to the pandemic, this program was postponed from 2020.

 In 2010, a monthly Institute Lecture was launched, which aims to introduce important topics and fundamental results to graduate students and researchers. Every year, a book entitled “Institute Lectures” collecting these lectures is published.

Starting 2018, we organize annually the Loo-keng Hua Youth Forum, aiming to invite young talented mathematicians to share their recent researches. Till now, more than 100 people have been invited for this Forum.