1. Historical Brief
Founded in 1997, the School of Mathematical Sciences consists of the five specialties of the original Department of Mathematics and the Nankai Institute of Mathematics, which are originally two separated academic units.
The department of Mathematics was set up by Professor Lifu Jiang in 1920. Over the past several decades, it has nurtured a great number of excellent scholars for the development of mathematics in modern China, e.g., the famous mathematician Professor S. S. Chern, the well-known professor Zehan Jiang, and Professor Daren Wu. All of them graduated from this department. Since 1949, the department has made a tremendous progress and initiated some new programs such as Computer Software, Automatic Control, Information Science, and Statistics & Probability, which are important for the development of China. In 1985, the programs of Computer Software and Auto-Control were separated from the department and became the Department of Computer and System-Sciences.
In 1986, a “class for the talented” was opened in the department under the permission of the National Education Commission of China. This class annually enrolls 30 to 35 students who are winners of national mathematical contests. After graduation, those students who excel in studies will be admitted to the graduate school directly without entrance examination. In 1993, the class was renamed by the National Education Commission as the “Training Base for Researchers and teachers of Basic Sciences of the Country.”
In 1996, Nankai University became one of the first universities that were included in the “211 Project.” Moreover, the School of Mathematics is specified as one of the four and a half essential units within this project.
The Nankai Institute of Mathematics was established in 1995. The first appointed director was Prof. S. S. Chern, who was a member of the American Science Association, a two times winner of the Wolf Prize (in 1983 and 1984) and the ex-director of the American Institute of Mathematics. The objective of the Nankai Institute of Mathematics is to unite Chinese and foreign mathematicians to contribute to the progress of pure and applied mathematics in China.
2. Research Achievements
Ever since the seventh “five-year-plan”, members of our school has published more than 1200 academic articles in the national and international periodicals together with more than 50 treatises. They have finished 83 research assignments at both provincial and ministerial levels, and have won a number of national scientific and technical progress prizes. Two of these prizes are in the first rank, 10 of them are in the second rank, and 7 of them are in the third rank. They have also won 9 other national prizes and 13 provincial and ministerial prizes. In the following, we list some of the outstanding young scholars in our school.
Professor Yongchuan Chen won the National Scientific Funds for Excellent Youth because of his fantastic achievements in combinatorics and its applications. He also won the first position of the National Scientific Progress in 1996 and the Hussein Young Scientist Award of the UNESCO in 1997.
Professor Yiming Long obtained the Natural Science Funds for Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Experts in 1993 for his leadership in the research of non-Hamilton System and Symplectic Geometry. Moreover, he won the second grade award of the National Education Commission Scientific Progress for the program of Periodical Group of Non-Hamilton System in 1991. He also won the Outstanding Youth Expert Prize from the Hong Kong Qiushi Foundation in 1996.
Professor Weiping Zhang won the National Outstanding Youth Funds in 1995 because of his excellent work in Global Differential Geometry and also won the Outstanding Young Experts Prize from the Hong Kong Qiushi Foundation.
Professor Fangwei Fu has made wonderful contribution to information coding theory. He has published many articles in the world famous IEEE Information Theory as well as other national key periodicals such as the Scientific Report. He gave lectures in quite a number of European institutions during his visits to Germany in 1996 and 1997.
Professor Fuquan Fang has achieved some very important results on the problems of singular structures of 4-dimensional non-orientable manifolds. He was invited to Oxford University to give lectures.
Professor Yongjin Wang has published some excellent articles in first class national and international periodicals on Super Process.
These young and outstanding scholars are the guarantees for the future development of the school that enable us to enter the top rank of world mathematical research in a number of fields.
3.teaching Work
(a) The teaching of undergraduate students:
Currently there are 670 students and 60 teachers in our school. There are 5 programs in 5 departments. Amongst these programs, the program of mathematics is a base to nurture experts in basic science in China. There are 29 required courses and 71 optional courses. The school also carries the duty of teaching college Mathematics (or Advance Mathematics) for the whole university.
Over 55.6% of our doctoral advisers give lectures to the undergraduates. Over 83% of the lecturers for undergraduate courses are full professors or associate professors. 59% of the young teachers are doctoral degree holders.
In order to improve the teaching quality of undergraduates, there is an evaluation team consisting of highly qualified and experienced teachers, and there are 44 courses in the teaching of which young teachers are helped by senior teachers in various ways.
The authority of our school also emphasizes the importance of textbooks. We have already published over 20 textbooks. Ten of them were published since 1994, and three of them have won prizes. For example, the book "Nurturing High Quality Basic Mathematics Experts" won the first rank award in Tianjin. The school also actively encourages research in teaching methods so as to deepen the reform of teaching and curriculum system. In addition, Professor Daoji Meng has been an honor for the Institute for his achievement in Advance Algebra and Analytic Geometry.
(b) The teaching of the graduate students:
The school of Mathematics has doctoral programs in Fundamental Mathematics, Numerical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Probability & Statistics. Our school is one of the first-class mathematical schools in China that have been licensed to award doctoral degree in mathematics.
There are 28 doctor candidate supervisors and an academician and 55 Ph.D students in our college. It allocated Selected Topics of Modern Mathematics public required course, and there are many optional courses. On the other hand, the subjects for the master program in the school include Pure Mathematics, Numerical Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Probability & Statistics. Currently there are 50 master candidate advisors and 148 master students in our college. There are 3 required courses and lots of optional courses for students in each subject.