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CHAOS/XAOC 2009

July 24th -26th

For five consecutive summers, 1989-1993, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) sponsored a series of Soviet-American Chaos Conferences,¹ held alternately in the United States and locations in the former Soviet Union². These meetings brought together leading researchers in chaos theory and nonlinear science from two parts of the world in settings conducive to free exchange of ideas. The conferences were eminently successful in opening up channels of communication and collaboration, in stimulating new work, and in giving rise to a new journal, Chaos, which has met a clear need and prospered in the years since its 1991 founding.

Now, as the twentieth anniversary of the first of those conferences approaches, and given the lively current environment of exciting research in nonlinear science, it seems appropriate to hold another “chaos conference,” one that will emphasize recent work and new directions in the field. With a nod to the past, we include the Russian word Xaoc (Chaos) in the conference title, but the focus is no longer specific to the regions emphasized in the earlier series. Also, in the spirit of a reunion, those who participated in the earlier conferences will be invited again, but the principal speakers will be chosen from among younger active researchers, not from this older cohort. These featured speakers will be introduced by their nominators, who will be asked to provide a broader context for the presented work.

The meeting will be held over a three-day period, July 24-26, 2009, at the Jonsson Conference Center of the National Academy of Sciences in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This is where three of the five earlier meetings were held. Many among the attendees who are not scheduled speakers will be “alumni” of the earlier conferences. Others will be younger active researchers in the field. We foresee valuable “ferment” from the mixture of junior and senior colleagues.

1) Later the meetings were called FSU-USA Chaos Conferences, the acronym FSU referring to the Former Soviet Union.

2) Support for these conferences came also from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.