The 24th International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), held in China for the first time, opened in Beijing on Tuesday in the Great Hall of the People.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin attended the ceremony and with Jacob Palles, president of the International Mathematics Union (IMU), awarded Fields Medals to France's Laurent Lafforgue and Vladimir Voevododsky from Russia.
Madhu Sudan from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won the Nevanlinna Prize.
More than 2,000 foreign and over 1,000 Chinese mathematicians attended this academic gathering, which is held every four years.
Addressing the opening ceremony, Chinese Vice-Premier Li Lanqing said China was striving for modernization and during the process, more and more young scholars had become active in the international academic arena.
The Chinese government gave full support to various academic activities and relevant international cooperation. It had also promulgated a series of initiatives and plans in a bid to boost scientific research, including mathematics, Li said.
He said Chinese scientists should strive harder because science in China still lagged behind global advanced levels. The current ICM provided opportunities for more comprehensive cooperation between Chinese scientists and their overseas colleagues.
He said he hoped that the 24th ICM would become a new starting point for progress in China's mathematics as well as science at large.
The ICM is the most authoritative academic meeting of mathematicians from all over the world going back more than 100 years. At the nine-day conference, 20 mathematicians will deliverone-hour plenary lectures and 174 will give 45-minute workshops.
To help the public have a deeper understanding of mathematics, a variety of activities will also be held, including a math forum for youth, a math summer camp and public lectures given by China'stop scientific award winner Wu Wenjun and Nobel Prize winner JohnNash.
(Xinhua New Agency August 21, 2002)
