Prof Ngo Bao Chau at the launching ceremony of the publication held in Hanoi on December 18

A brain-child of noted math Prof Ngo Bao Chau, the magazine will run items in a "user friendly" format accessible to school and college students.

“We made a hard decision but we determined to publish such a printed magazine because we hope that students will wait for the day each month to buy their favourite publication,” Chau said.

Chau used the 15,000 USD cash prize he received with the 2010 Fields Medal, an international medal for outstanding discoveries in mathematics, as seed money for the magazine.

It took three years for him and his colleagues at the Vietnam Mathematical Society to prepare the contents and complete the administrative procedures to publish the magazine.

Cover of the magazine’s first edition

Tran Nam Dung, a lecturer at HCM City National University, has already an online version called Epsilon, 12 editions of which were published in the past two years. The latest editions were downloaded more than 10,000 times.

Toan Hoc và Tuoi Tre (Math and Youth) was published over 50 years ago by the Education Publishing House.

The society has also run two magazines in English for researchers to publish their articles.

At the launch ceremony of the PI magazine on December 18, Prof Ha Huy Khoai, the publication’s editor-in-chief, said the target audience is broader than existing math magazines. Its audience will range from students, teachers, university lecturers, math-lovers to even people who don’t like math.

“It contains a main column introducing modern views on classical math notions or classical approaches to modern notions,” he said. “A column titled "Cung Ban Giai Toan" (Solving Math Problems with You) will guide readers how to solve concrete math problems. The "Thach Thuc Toan Hoc" (Maths Challenge) column will be among the most anticipated column by people who like overcoming challenges.”

Columns like "Toan Hoc va Doi Song" (Maths and Life), "Quan Toan" (Maths Shop) and "Toan cua Bi " (Bi’s Maths) will bring fresh views on maths, which is generally considered a somewhat "dry" subject.

Prof Chau will act as deputy-editor-in-chief of the magazine, while the editorial board includes leading math teachers in Vietnam, like Tran Van Nhung, Tran Nam Dung, Nguyen Tien Dung and Pham Huy Dien.

Prof Chau was born into a Vietnamese family of scholars in 1972. At the age of 15, he was admitted into a class in the Vietnam National University High School specialising in mathematics.

Chau received gold medals at both the 29th and 30th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

He finished his undergraduate study in France and began to research the Langlands Program as a postgraduate. He then proved the Fundamental Lemma of the Langlands Program in 2008.

Chau’s proof of the Fundamental Lemma in the theory of automorphic forms through the introduction of new algebro-geometric methods has been listed as one of the top ten scientific discoveries of 2009 by Time magazine.

VNA