Plattform Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik
2018 marked a year of development for the Platform MAP. Thanks to an increased budget, it was possible to appoint a new Head of the Platform at 80%. Marc Türler took this position in October and had a quick start by taking the minutes of the Open Data Workshop of 29 October. The success of this workshop is the result of a big effort throughout 2018 by the President, Friedrich-Karl Thielemann, the whole Presidium and Christian Preiswerk, the outgoing Head of the Platform.
The success of the Round Table "Swiss Representation in International Organisations and Research Infrastructures" (RoTIORI) of the Platform MAP has led SERI to give a mandate to SCNAT in mid-2018 to extend this model to other scientific disciplines. The Platform MAP leads a pilot group – constituted by the end of 2018 and chaired by Hans-Rudolf Ott – for setting this up in the Platforms Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences. The first prime objective is to organise the communities towards writing discipline-specific roadmaps by early 2021 for the funding period 2025–2028.
The other long-lasting project that successfully ended in winter 2017–2018 is the publication "Large Astronomical Facilities: Their Fundamental Importance for Swiss Astronomers" in the series Swiss Academies Communications.
Besides these highlights, marking the end of the six-year term of Friedrich-Karl Thielemann as MAP President and the even longer dedication of Christian Preiswerk, the Platform MAP continued in 2018 its usual, numerous activities in collaboration with the member organisations, as reported below.
The Platform MAP publication "Large Astronomical Facilities: Their Fundamental Importance for Swiss Astronomers" in the series Swiss Academies Communications was finalised at the end of 2017 and was largely distributed in early 2018 in English, German or French to institutions, institutes and universities, to societies of amateur astronomers, to museums, planetariums, schools and physics teachers, to selected industries, and upon request to journalists.
The Euler Committee published – as recently every year – a new volume of the Leonhard Euler Opera Omnia. In 2018, it is volume 8 of the letter exchange series IVA dedicated to the exchange of letters with Johann Andreas von Segner and other scholars from the University of Halle. The publication of the three remaining volumes is foreseen to be achieved by the end of 2020.
The Platform MAP supports financially two discipline-specific publications: the European journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" and "Elemente der Mathematik". The Swiss Committee on Space Research (CSR) publishes every second year the report "Space Research in Switzerland". The last one covers the period 2016–2018 and was prepared for the 42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly held in July 2018.
The Platform MAP organised successfully the workshop "Open Data and Data Management – Issues and Challenges" on 29 October 2018 at the "Kaserne Bern". It welcomed around 120 participants, who exchanged views and ideas in four separate working groups. The morning presentations, the pictures, an executive summary, the complete minutes and a summarising presentation by the MAP President have all been made available online.
The Platform MAP supports every year the meetings of its member organisations, sometimes in collaboration with other national societies or those of neighbouring countries. Special weight is given to support strategic workshops to shape the future of a specific discipline. In this respect, the Platform MAP supported the two strategic workshops of the Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP) to define the "Swiss input for the discussion on the European Strategy for Particle Physics", which was published on 18 December 2018.
The discipline-specific international activities are primarily carried out by the commissions and the national committees of MAP. The direct activities of the Platform are listed below.
The Platform MAP held again in 2018 two meetings of the Round Table "Swiss Representation in International Organisations and Research Infrastructures" (RoTIORI). It is a forum for the exchange of information between representatives of Swiss fostering organisations and scientists active in financially intensive research infrastructures. Specific themes of 2018 were the funding gap for the operational phase of scientific space experiments, the identification of a shortage of neutron source facilities in the next decade, as well as the possible future Swiss participation to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).
SCNAT received in mid-2018 the mandate from SERI to extend the successful RoTIORI model to other fields of sciences in view of producing specific community roadmaps for the funding period 2025–2028. With its experience, the Platform MAP is steering this effort and convened in December 2018 a first meeting of a pilot group chaired by Hans-Rudolf Ott with representatives of the Platforms Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences.
Mirjam van Daalen (PSI) has been elected as one of the two Swiss scientific delegates in the ESFRI Plenum succeeding to David Bohmert (SNSF). Stéphane Udry (Uni GE) succeeded to Willy Benz as Swiss delegate to the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
As part of a wider campaign, Swiss activists requested renaming the moon crater "Agassiz Promontory" because of the racist views of the scientist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873). As the International Astronomical Union (IAU) did not respond to their appeal for several months, they asked SCNAT to act via our national IAU contact point. The SCNAT, after consultation with the Platform MAP, recognized the issue, but did not see it as its task to get actively involved.
The activities for the promotion of young scientists in the Platform MAP essentially take place via its member societies. A special event of 2018 was the conference "Scientiæ et Robotica", a further education training for teachers of secondary education II, which was co-organised by the Swiss Society of Mathematics and Physics Teachers (VSMP/SSPMP).
In 2018, three well-established Summer or Winter schools have been organised in astronomy (Saas-Fee Course), particle physics (Zuoz Summer School) and space science (Alpbach Summer School). In addition, the Swiss Mathematical Society (SMS) organised in 2018 for the first time in Switzerland two international meetings: the seventh Young Geometric Group Theory (YGGT) in March in Les Diablerets, and the eleventh Young Set Theory Workshop (YSTW) in June in Lausanne. The Platform MAP supported via the Swiss Physical Society (SPS), the Physics Olympiads, the Swiss Young Physics Tournament (SYPT), the International Physics Tournament and the Young Physics Forum.
The Schläfli Prize of the Platform MAP has been awarded in 2018 to the mathematician Livio Liechti (University of Bern). The Prize of 2019 will be in physics and the selection committee has been formed. Other prizes to young scientists are awarded by the member organisations, in particular the CHIPP Prize and the newly created Edith A. Müller Award of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA).
As usual, two Plenum meetings took place in 2018 with the representatives of the MAP member organisations and including an invited talk by a specialist. This was given in March by Philippe Jetzer (UZH) on "Gravitational waves and multi-messenger astronomy" and in November by Jean-Paul Kneib (EPFL) on "The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) - Swiss activities". Both topics are relevant also for the RoTIORI, since the future involvement of Switzerland to such large international collaboration is subject to discussions.
The successful Open Data Workshop (see above) was a very important milestone for the Platform MAP and also more generally for SCNAT. The event was part of "We scientists shape science" and showed that SCNAT can play a significant role in scientific culture by facilitating the dialogue between the science community and funding agencies.
The Presidium held four meetings in 2018. Besides the organisation of the Open Data Workshop, an important theme was the input to the Pluriannual Plan 2021-2024 to be submitted to SERI for the first time in a single, global document by the Swiss Academies of Art and Sciences (a+). Possible activities for the International Year of the Period Table (IYPT) 2019 were also discussed, as well as the possibility to take over the idea of the Young Faculty Meeting of the Platform Chemistry. The latter was brought to the MAP Plenum, where the idea did not get much support, in particular because it is not clear if there is a demand for this among young professors and because of the very diverse scientific communities in the Platform MAP.
Finally, there has been quite some discussions towards taking position with respect to the consultation of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK) to the total revision of the regulations for teacher recognition. The project goes towards a lowering of the requirements for high-school teachers, that is felt as a negative evolution by some Presidium members. The issue went up to the SCNAT and to a+, but due to diverging views on the topic, a common position statement was finally not submitted. The MAP Presidium regrets this outcome.
The relevance of the publication of the report "Large Astronomical Facilities: Their Fundamental Importance for Swiss Astronomers" was already presented in last-year's report. This led to an article by Anne Jacob (SCNAT) in the printed magazine "Revue Educateur" issue 3/2018 of the "Syndicat des Enseignants Romands" (SER).
The foreseen publication by the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) – with important support from the Platform MAP – on the importance of physics to the economy of Switzerland was still not finalized by the end of 2018. A company has led the study and produced a document in Autumn 2018. Apparently, the supporting material and the figures are fine, but the text cannot be used without thorough edition by physicists, thus further delaying its publication.
The Platform MAP supports the maintenance of the thematic portal on particle physics hosted on the SCNAT website and the addition of monthly news articles. It also supports outreach activities submitted to and approved by the SSAA, as well as the publication of the COSPAR Report 2016–2018 (see above).
After CHIPP, and the Swiss Committee on Space Research (CSR) in 2017, the Swiss Society for Optics and Microscopy (SSOM) has now also migrated its institutional website to the SCNAT portal. Other societies could follow, especially if the web redesign is successful.
The extension of the position of Platform Head offered the possibility at the end of 2018 to develop considerably the website of the Platform and to translate it to French and English. It is foreseen to have this become a lively showcase to present the activities conducted or supported by the Platform MAP, both for the community and the interested public.