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prof. Wolfgang's Reichel visit
6-12 May 2012

Report
Sometimes the best decisions in life are made completely spontaneously. And so it happened this time. During the September Intensive course we had an opportunity to meet many great people, students and professors alike. Particularly memorable for us were the lectures of Professor Wolfgang Reichel: humorous, interesting, enthralling. Without a second thought, during their goodbyes two students expressed their enthusiasm by inviting Professor Reichel to Katowice. And, as time would show, it would turn out to be the best possible idea!

If such things as good mathematical spirits exist, they watched over this expedition: usually organising large events (and inviting a Professor from abroad for a whole week is definitely one of those) is ripe with troubles, problems and unexpected occurences - however, this time it was different. We quickly received an information that the Student Board accepted our idea and gave us a quite big donation. It remained only to confess to Professor Roman Ger, the Head of the Institute of Mathematics, what have we done... And it is not hard to imagine our faces, when Professor Ger not only accepted our idea, but also gave us a tremendous honour by proposing to give a joint invitation, from the Institute of Mathematics and the Society. From that moment on, nothing could go wrong! Enormous kindness, help and donation from Professor Ger annihilated all problems before they even appeared - for which we once again give our sincerest thanks.

We fixed a date: Professor Reichel would visit us in May, since 6th to 12th. Some points of schedule were obvious: among them two talks on the seminars of the Department of Functional Equations; our roles were to make the rest of the schedule. It quickly became apparent that even a month-long visit would be too short to exhaust at least a small part of our ideas. Silesia and its neighboring provinces amazed us with a multitude of fascinating possibilities; after long brainstorms we chose several of them, trying to keep them varied. We had a historical walk through a unique Katowice district - Nikiszowiec, we walked around the Silesian Culture and Recreation Park, we visited Kraków and the monumental Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Góry and, of course, we organised a day for talks: Professor Reichel told us about the brachistochrone problem in his talk "Analysis speeds you up - the Brachistochrone problem", and two students from the Society told a little bit about their mathematical interests: Szymon Draga gave his talk "Regularity of the graphs of injective additive functions", and Piotr Idzik - "Attractors for semigroups in metric spaces". It is worth to mention here that results of Szymon will be published as a paper. Our lecture day splendidly combined scientifical and informal atmosphere to motivate mathematical discussions, which we deemed very fruitful. We were also very happy about the multitude of people who participated in the meeting.

It is said that all that's good ends quickly - in our case this sentence proved to bee to true: it seemed that Professor Reichel just arrived, and there we were, saying our goodbyes... We have a big hope that this acquaintance will stay strong and we will meet with Professor Wolfgang Reichel many times more.

It is mine pleasure to once again thank those without whom this weekly meeting would never come to be:

In the name of the whole Students' Mathematical Society I would like to thank Professor Wolfgang Reichel for accepting our invitation - it was not only a tremendous honor, but also a great pleasure; for all good, kind, intelligent talks, for joint discussions about mathematics and joint trips, for a great, memorable week.

To Professor Roman Ger, the Head of the Institute of Mathematics US - for everything. I could go on and on, but it still would not be enough. Without Professor Ger's enormous kindness this whole event would not be possible, and his great help and wise advice were with us the whole time.

I would also like to thank all the students and doctoral students who helped with this week: for help, ideas, organisation, presence. Here I would like to give my particular thanks to several those who put much time in this visit: Paweł Zwoleński, Mateusz Jurczyński, Weronika Siwek, Marek Biedrzycki, Szymon Draga, Piotr Idzik, Sabina Wrońska - for great ideas, support, help, for everything - thank you very much.

And, as has become a Society's tradition, in this English version I, as a translator, would like to use my privilege to thank Joanna Zwierzyńska, whose modesty made her not list her among those who made Professor Reichel's visit possible. Thank you, Joanna, for putting so much work in this event and for keeping it all together with your organisational skills.
last update: 19.05.2012

Contact:

Students' Mathematical Society of the University of Silesia
(Koło Naukowe Matematyków Uniwersytetu ¦l±skiego)
40-007 Katowice, ul. Bankowa 14 (room 524)
tel. (032) 359-20-96, email: knm@knm.katowice.pl