Lebanese by heritage, Brazilian by birth, Jacob Palis has become president of the world's largest society for professional mathematicians. What's it like to lead a life filled with figures and formulas?

Palis's Dynamical Career

Jacob Palis, a member of the ICTP Scientific Council since 1989, reached the pinnacle of his career this summer when he delivered his first address as president-elect of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), the world's largest organization for professional mathematicians.

Palis, a relaxed yet expressive man who often displays an understated self-assurance that is both appealing and persuasive, is currently professor and director of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For more than a decade, he has also been the lead organizer of ICTP's Schools and Workshops on Dynamical Systems, which have become among the most respected activities held at the Centre.

"Last year's workshop," Palis proudly notes, "received rave reviews from both lecturers and participants. In terms of quality, it could easily match the workshops at the very best universities and institutes in the world. We have certainly come a long way from where we started in the early 1980s, when the number of participants often depended on our ability to work the phones. Today, we readily turn down people that we would have gladly accepted just a few years ago."

Like the ICTP workshops he organizes, Palis's career in mathematics has also come a long way. Born to Lebanese parents who had moved to remote Uberaba, Brazil, to find a better life, Palis displayed an interest in math at a young age. When he entered the University of Brazil, which now bears the name of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, his talent for figures and formulas initially found expression in the university's engineering department. In fact, Palis graduated with a degree in engineering in 1964.

"My family wanted me to pursue a career in engineering because they thought it would be more lucrative." Palis adds that "There were hardly any mathematicians working in Brazil in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So it was hard to know what such people did. There just weren't enough role models around to help young, interested students like me draw a clear picture of the profession."

"I knew this much, however," says Palis. "That I was more interested in understanding the principles behind engineering than the 'how to' aspects of the profession."

Driven by his personal interest, Palis spent the next five years at the University of California at Berkeley--four as graduate student and one as post-doc after earning his Ph.D.

"My field of concentration is dynamical systems, a sector of mathematics that tries to understand how multi-variable complex systems behave over the long run. Abstract formulas and complex models dominate the research agenda but our efforts involve more than trying to solve mind-bending puzzles. Our findings, for example, help enhance our understanding of population growth patterns, global climate change and even stock market fluctuations."

In 1968, Palis returned to Brazil, where he has lived and worked ever since. "When I went back home," he observes, "our universities and research institutes still did not have a system in place for turning out an adequate number of mathematicians with advanced degrees. One or two doctorate students were produced here or there but for the most part Brazil's mathematicians were educated and worked abroad."

"That's no longer the case. Since the mid 1970s, Brazil's universities and research institutes have granted advanced degrees to more than 1,000 students. Many now remain in Brazil, where they enjoy productive and rewarding careers."

Palis notes that "For the first time in Brazil's history a critical mass of mathematicians--and an even larger number of students with advanced math degrees--are now in place to ensure a bright future for the profession."

That's why Palis is so enthusiastic about his 4-year term as president of the IMU, which began in January 1999. "One of my goals is to improve the state of mathematics throughout the developing world. With Brazil as a model--Argentina, China, India and Korea are others--we now have enough experience to know what works and what doesn't."

"I plan to make sharing this information a key aspect of my presidency," Palis says. "Such exchanges would not only help improve the state of mathematics within individual countries but ultimately would expand the profession's frontiers by opening it to a larger pool of talented students."

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