30/07/2021

'Colloquium shows the vitality of Brazilian mathematics', says Dan

If it weren't for the Brazilian Mathematics Colloquium , the career of IMPA researcher Dan Marchesin , founder of the institute's fluid dynamics laboratory, might have taken a very different turn. His first participation in the event sparked a fascination with the discipline, which was the starting point for his career change. “I was going to become a physicist and decided to become a mathematician. Other people also influenced me. But the Colloquium carries a lot of weight because it shows the vitality of Brazilian mathematics and a little bit of what's out there as well,” he says.

The researcher fondly remembers his first time at the meeting, when it was still held in Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais, and had only a few hundred participants. “It was great because we spent 24 hours a day at the Colloquium. Maybe we slept, but we slept in the hotel, sharing rooms with other colloquium participants. It was very intense, both socially and mathematically.”

First held in 1957, the early editions of the meeting had a more educational focus, given the need to train young mathematicians and provide them with initial guidance. Over the years, the organization kept pace with the evolution of Brazilian mathematics and made the event more scientific through a partial internationalization of the meeting. From the 19th edition onwards, the program began to include plenary lectures given by internationally renowned mathematicians, which sparked the interest of an ever-growing number of participants.

With the considerable increase in registrations from all over the country and other parts of the world, the Colloquium was moved to the IMPA headquarters in Jardim Botânico in 1987. For Marchesin, the event's trademark became the intense movement of students and researchers passing through and interacting in the institute's corridors. “It's a great place to make contact with other mathematicians, which is very important. Everyone is gathered there, there's a coffee shop in the hallway… Even if I'm busy, I try to stroll through the corridors to talk to people, meet colleagues, and see others again,” he shares.

The researcher highlights the Colloquium's potential to foster new and promising lines of research in Brazilian mathematics. For the 3Tuesdays edition of the event , held virtually, Marchesin prepared an introductory course on mathematical epidemiology and organized a roundtable discussion on perspectives for interdisciplinary collaboration in the field. “Research in fluid dynamics in Brazil, for example, took off with the Colloquium. I hope that the same will happen in this edition with mathematical epidemiology, an area in which few professionals work in the country. We prepared a bilingual course with this intention.”

The lectures for the mathematical epidemiology course are now available on the Colloquium's YouTube channel . To follow this and other courses and lectures from the event, subscribe to the channel!