Ari Laptev

Ari Laptev obtained his PhD at Leningrad University. A post at Leningrad followed. Afterwards he moved to Linköpping, KTH Stockholm, and Imperial College London. He was president of the organising committee of the 4th ECM. His research interests lie in the spectral theory of differential operators. Ari Laptev is the Director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute.

The Society 2007-2010

Lobbying by successive EMS presidents finally achieved representation for mathematics in the Physical and Engineering Sciences Committee of the European Science Foundation. The immediate effect was that the Foundation agreed to support 5-6 conferences annually at Institutes of Mathematics in Europe, and in collaboration with the Foundation the Society undertook a project on Mathematics and Industry. The EU was successfully persuaded to finance mathematics infrastructure projects, and an EU grant was obtained for the European Digital Mathematical Library. In internal matters this was also an intense period. The EMS established annual Meetings of Presidents of the member societies, which continue running to this day. The Ethics Committee was formed. The Otto Neugebauer prize in the History of Mathematics, to be awarded at each ECM, was established in a joint collaboration with Springer Verlag. The 5th ECM was successfully held in Amsterdam. EMS members were given the right to free online access to Zentralblatt-MATH.