The Independent University of Moscow (IUM) is a small, elite institution for training future research mathematicians. It was founded in 1991 at the initiative of a group of well-known Russian mathematicians, who now comprise the Academic Council of the University. Professors P. Deligne (IAS, Princeton) and R. McPherson (IAS, Princeton) also played crucial roles in founding the Independent University.
The main goal pursued by the Independent University is to maintain the best traditions of the Moscow Mathematical School. Gifted young people obtain the highest possible mathematical education as well as broad possibilities for further research and teaching. Despite its small size, the high level of students and professors makes the IUM one of the leading mathematical centers in Russia. A paper in the Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society provides more information about the IUM.
Starting from 1991, lecture courses were given by:
- V.I. Arnold (Univ. Paris Dauphine and IUM),
- A.A. Belavin (IUM),
- B.L. Feigin (IUM),
- S.M. Gusein-Zade (IUM),
- Yu.S. Ilyashenko (Cornell Univ. and IUM),
- A.G. Khovanskii (Univ. of Toronto and IUM),
- A.A. Kirillov (Univ. of Pennsylvania),
- I.M. Krichever (Columbia Univ.),
- S.P. Novikov (Univ. of Maryland),
- A.N. Rudakov (Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology),
- Ya.G. Sinai (Princeton),
- V.A. Vassiliev (IUM),
- and many others.
The leading professors, including V.I. Arnold, B.L. Feigin, S.P. Novikov, and V.A. Vassiliev, gave plenary talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians. V.I. Arnold is an honorary member of numerous universities and a Crafoord Prize winner.
The Independent University has numerous international connections. In 1994 the IUM signed an agreement to collaborate with the leading French institution of higher learning, the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). Each year the best undergraduate and graduate students of the two institutions take part in an academic exchange program, having the opportunity to study under the supervision of leading scientists from the partner country.
In 1998 a joint research project in geometry and topology with the University of Rennes (France) was initiated and is now efficiently functioning.
In September 2002, a French-Russian Mathematics Laboratory was inaugurated at the IUM, in the presence of high-ranking officials of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the French CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). The ribbon was cut by the recent Fields medalist Laurent Lafforgue, who stayed as a guest of the Laboratory for a month. The laboratory has a small permanent staff (six French researchers and twenty Russians) but possesses the financial means for organizing conferences and inviting visiting researchers.
The IUM has a general mathematics seminar, called “Globus”, where internationally recognized mathematicians give talks to the students and faculty. The talks were given by Pierre Cartier (ENS, Paris), Steve Smale (Hong Kong–Berkeley), Anatole Katok (Pennsylvania State University), Laurent Lafforgue (IHES, Paris), A. Vershik (St. Petersburg), A. Beilinson (Chicago), A. Zelevinsky (Boston) and others.
Since 1993, the IUM has offered a three-year graduate program. Not only IUM professors, but also other mathematicians are invited as academic advisors. Each graduate student has already published papers of their own. Sixty-two of the graduates have completed the graduate program and defended their PhD theses; five of them have also defended their State Doctor theses (the next degree after PhD and the highest degree in Russia needed to obtain full professorship at leading universities). Three of them have been elected corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2006 one of our graduates (Andrei Okounkov) was awarded the Fields Medal, the analogue of the Nobel Prize in mathematics. Graduate students often teach optional courses to IUM students. The possibility for a talented young person to give a course of their own choice is one of the advantages of the IUM. In 1998 the American Mathematical Society published a collection of research papers by professors and graduate students of the IUM (“Mathematics at the Independent University of Moscow”, AMS Translations, Series 2, vol. 185, 1998).
The Independent University is situated in a newly reconstructed modern building of the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematical Education (MCCME) in the very center of Moscow. This building includes a library, a computer lab, a cafeteria, a small publishing house, and a bookshop specializing in math books. The library receives a number of scholarly journals that arrive significantly earlier than in any other academic library in Moscow, thanks to the assistance of our foreign partners.
The publishing house of the IUM and MCCME has published, since its foundation in 1991, several dozen Lecture Notes of the courses given at the IUM. These Lecture Notes are very popular among the students, in particular due to their low prices. Some of them have since been republished by other publishing houses. These include “Partial differential equations” by V.I. Arnold, “Introduction to topology” by V.A. Vassiliev, “Algebra for beginners” by E.B. Vinberg (Factorial Publ.), “Geometry” by V.V. Prasolov and V.M. Tikhomirov, “Knots, links and 3-manifolds” by V.V. Prasolov and A.B. Sossinsky (MCCME Publ.), “Kählerian geometry of loop spaces” by S.G. Sergeev, “Differential geometry” by S.M. Gusein-Zade, “Lectures in mathematical logic and the theory of algorithms” by A.Kh. Shen and N.K. Vereshagin, “Introduction to mathematical statistical physics” by R.A. Minlos, “Lectures on generating functions” by S.K. Lando, “The moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces, real algebraic curves, and their superanalogs” by S.M. Natanson, “Polynomials” by V. Prasolov, “Lagrangian and Legendrian characteristic classes” by V.A. Vassiliev and others.
Since 2001 the IUM has been publishing an English-language research quarterly, the Moscow Mathematical Journal (distributed in the West by the American Mathematical Society). Currently, the Moscow Mathematical Journal has the highest impact factor among Russian mathematical journals.
The MCCME works closely with high schools in Moscow and other parts of Russia, organizing various forms of extracurricular mathematical education and competitions. The IUM and MCCME participate in the organization of such celebrated mathematical competitions as the Moscow High School Mathematical Olympiad and the (international) Tournament of Towns, headed by Professor N.N. Konstantinov.
These activities allow the IUM to form a solid base for its own further development.