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The Nominations Committee for the new President-elect and the new Council members consisted of Robert Adler (CCSP), Ole Barndorff-Nielsen (Publications Committee), David Brillinger (C(PS)2), Masatoshi Fukushima (EAPRC), Peter Hall (President-elect and committee chair), Lars Holst (ERC), Luis Raul Pericchi (LARC) and David Siegmund (President). Their task was to choose an incoming President-elect, who would take over from Peter Hall on his transition to President in Seoul, and to select six new members of Council, to replace the six who will retire at the time of the Seoul meeting.
The committee first drew up a list of 25 candidates for either President or Council, and then, through a series of ballots, selected first a candidate for President and then six members of Council. There was extensive discussion by email at each stage of the process. It ranged over issues such as the need to ensure appropriate representation by both region and subject area. The process began in mid June and was concluded in mid October. Then the (present) Council deliberated on, and approved, the Nominations Committee's choices.
By this process, Don Dawson was chosen as President-elect and Paul Feigin, Chii-Ruey Hwang, Richard Tweedie, Elisabeth de Turckheim, Ruth Williams and Victor Yohai were selected as the new Council members.
Don, who has an exceptional reputation for his wide-ranging and deep contributions to stochastics, is the Society's first President from Canada. In 2000 he retired as Director of the Fields Institute, and he is presently a Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.
The new Council members, as well as being particularly talented scientists in fields of statistical science covered by the Society, also represent a number of the various parts of the world from which the Society draws its members. Feigin is from the Middle East, Hwang from Asia, Tweedie and Williams from North America, Turckheim from Europe, and Yohai from South America.
The other six members of the Council (with term until 2003) are Masatoshi Fukushima, Luis Gorostiza, Iain Johnstone, Jana Jurecková, Jean-François Le Gall and Bernard Silverman.
In 1999, beginning with Volume 5, the Bernoulli Society took over publication from Chapman and Hall of BERNOULLI, the principal journal of the Society. The journal is now published by the ISI on behalf of the Bernoulli Society. At the end of 2000 the editor of the first six volumes, Ole Barndorff-Nielsen, was succeeded by Willem van Zwet. After a number of one-time costs associated with taking over publication from Chapman and Hall, the journal is now approximately breaking even financially.
Other changes of office during 1999-2001 have been as follows: (i) Enno Mammen has succeeded Wilfrid Kendall as Scientific Secretary; (ii) Mathisca de Gunst has succeeded Allan Gut as Treasurer; (iii) Ofer Zeitouni has succeeded Jean Jacod as editor of Stochastic Processes and their Applications; (iv) Adelchi Azzalini became the new editor of Bernoulli News, succeeding Angelika May; (v) Peter Jagers succeeded Joe Eaton as head of the Publications Committee.
When Peter Hall succeeds David Siegmund as President during the ISI meeting in Seoul, Donald Dawson will become President-Elect of the Bernoulli Society for 2001-2003.
During 2000 the Bernoulli Society negotiated reduced subscription rates with Elsevier, publisher of Stochastic Processes and their Applications. Subscribers who take the option of quarterly in lieu of monthly distribution of the paper journal (and receive complete access to the electronic version) are in 2001 paying ½ the old subscription price. Elsevier has also reduced quite substantially the price to a member of the Society for Stochastic Processes and Applications. The Bernoulli Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) initiated discussions about joint publication of an applied probability/stochastic processes journal in the event that the negotiations with Elsevier did not succeed. Elsevier has unfortunately not been forthcoming in making this reduced rate widely available, so it may be necessary to reconsider our decision to continue this affiliation.
In May 2000 the Bernoulli Society held its 5th World Congress in conjunction with the 63 annual meeting of the IMS at the Convention Center in Guanajuato, Mexico. Attendance at a very successful conference totalled 550. The head of the local organizing committee was Victor Perez-Abreu. Head of the scientific organizing committee was Evarist Giné-Masdeu.
In a project that was begun more than two years ago by then President Louis Chen, the Executive Committee of the Society, very ably assisted in writing and editing by Prof Yu-Kiang Leong of the Department of Mathematics of the National University of Singapore, and with input from the Council have prepared new Statutes for the Society. These Statutes were approved by the Bernoulli Society Council in Guanajuato, by the ISI Council at their November meeting in Voorburg and are currently in the process of ratification by the membership.
The purpose of the new Statutes is technical: to codify existing practice, e.g., by naming the Membership Secretary as a member of the Executive Committee, and to provide explicit terms of office for journal editors and Society officers. There is no change in the mission nor general organization of the Society.
An indication of current activity of the Society is the list of other BS
or BS co-sponsored meetings for 2001, which include:
The size of the Society has decreased by about 10% over the past two years. At present there are 1386 members, of whom about half are ISI members who select Bernoulli as their Section. The Society has started a program to support statisticians and probabilists in developing and transitional countries where access to scientific journals is still a big problem. By the end of the year 2000 eighteen scientists from twelve countries had been appointed as Bernoulli Society members at the expense of the funds of this Outreach Program. Extensions of the Outreach Program are planned. Contributions are very welcome.
The BS home page is http://www.warwick.ac.uk/statsdept/Bernoulli/. The financial condition of the Society is at present weaker than it was two years ago because of costs associated with taking over publication of Bernoulli.
As outgoing president I would like to thank the many individuals and in particular the Bernoulli Council, who through their time and energy make the Society the intellectually exciting activity that it is today.
David Siegmund,
28 August 2001
Donald Dawson did his undergraduate work in mathematics and physics at McGill University and then wrote his Ph.D. thesis at M.I.T. under the supervision of Henry P. McKean. He has taught at both McGill University in Montreal and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and supervised 24 Ph.D. students. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Carleton University - University of Ottawa Laboratory for Research in Statistics and Probability, since its inception in 1982, and he served as Director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences from 1996 to 2000.
He is currently Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University and Adjunct Professor at McGill University. His research interests include stochastic differential equations, infinite particle systems, measure-valued processes, stochastic partial differential equations, large deviation theory and applications of probability and statistics to statistical physics, evolutionary biology, communications and finance.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and he has given numerous invited lectures including the 1991 Gold Medal Lecture of the Statistical Society of Canada, the 1994 Jeffrey-Williams lecture of the Canadian Mathematical Society, a 45 minute invited address at the 1994 International Congress of Mathematicians in Zürich, special invited lecture to the IMS in 1996 and a plenary lecture at the 1996 World Congress of the Bernoulli Society in Vienna. He has a number of ongoing international research collaborations and received a Max Planck Award for International Cooperation in 1995. He has served on the editorial boards of a number of journals including the Annals of Probability, Canadian Journal of Statistics, Canadian Journal of Mathematics, Electronic Journal of Probability and Infinite Dimensional Analysis, Quantum Probability and Related Topics.
Donald Dawson
During the biennial session of the ISI several meetings of Bernoulli Society committees, a Bernoulli Society Council meeting and a General Assembly took place. During the conference Peter Hall succeeded David Siegmund as President. Donald Dawson has become new President-Elect. Paul Feigin, Chii-Ruey Hwang, Tom Kurtz, Elisabeth de Turckheim, Ruth Williams and Victor Yohai started their term as new members of BS Council. Currently the following persons act as chair persons of Bernoulli Society Committees: Robert Adler (CCSP), Louis H.Y.Chen (EAPRC), Gonzalo Perera (LARC), Peter Jagers (Publications Committee), Michael Sřrensen (ERC, Claudia Klüppelberg from 2002), David Brillinger (C(PS)2).
At the BS Council meeting and General Assembly discussed topics include: BS committee work, BS journals, cooperation with other societies, finances and number of members of the society. Because of losses of the journal BERNOULLI the financial situation of BS was not stable in the last two years. These losses are caused by the take over of production of the journal by BS/ISI two years ago. Much of the deficit consisted of one time costs and the situation is stabilizing now. The Council decided a yearly 4% increase of membership dues for 2002 and 2003 (approx. 5 Dfl). Furthermore it has been decided not to raise the price of BERNOULLI (both for individual and library subscription).
The slowly decreasing number of members was another point of concern at the meetings in Seoul. The following decisions have been made to encourage persons to join BS.
These actions should help to increase number of memberships of the Bernoulli Society. In particular, they address young researchers.Enno Mammen
Scientific Secretary
This report contains explanations of and remarks on the financial reports 1999 and 2000, and on the budget 2001. Major part of it was already presented by the former treasurer Allan Gut in Mexico, May 2000.
In general, business has run smoothly. The four points mentioned below for 1999/2000 are major changes or deviations from the situation over the years. The major concern is the financial situation of BERNOULLI. Another concern might be the decreasing number of members of the Society.
1. Dues. For many years BS members who were elected as ISI members were "punished" by suddenly having to additionally pay for BERNOULLI. During 1999 the dues problem between/within the societies has been solved in that a new dues mechanism, "the cafeteria style" has been introduced in 2000. The changes in net income/expenditure are marginal.
2. BERNOULLI. After a long and, finally, futile correspondence between the former treasurer and Chapman and Hall during the spring of 1997, an unacceptable price increase was decided by Chapman and Hall, in the sense that the term negotiations in reality meant that after asking for our view on the subject matter they decided what they wanted regardless of our view. Soon after that there followed the take over of Chapman and Hall by Kluwer. After some negotiations, internal meetings and discussions, it was decided that ISI/BS would take over the production of the journal. This initially led to some obvious (moderate) additional travel and other costs, but more importantly to a deficit for BERNOULLI in 1999 of 94,400 Dutch Guilders, 50% of which, i.e. 47,200 Guilders, being deficit for the Bernoulli Society. This cut the Bernoulli Society funds in 1999 by 30%. Much of the deficit consisted of one time costs. However, for the year 2000 the deficit for BERNOULLI was still 28,900 Guilders, meaning 14,450 Guilders for the Bernoulli Society. On the other hand, since in 2000 income over expenditure for the Bernoulli Society was +12,300 Guilders, in this year there only was a decrease of the Bernoulli Society funds by a small amount.
3. The Outreach Program. Because of a combination of factors, including the lack of availability of hard currency, some members of the Bernoulli Society do not have access to the Society's nor the ISI's publications. In an effort to make these publications more widely available, the Bernoulli Society has instituted a new initiative called Bernoulli Society Outreach Program. The purpose of the program is simply to help distribute society publications to organizations in regions of the world where Bernoulli Society members would not ordinarily have access to such material. The cost of the program is borne partly by the society and partly by contributions from society members. Members may contribute when paying their dues by including an amount to BS Outreach. The number of Outreach supported subscriptions to be reached in the first few years of the program will be around 20. Professor Ron Pyke from the University of Washington, Seattle, is the overseer/liaison person for the program.
The number of members supported in 2000 was 18, distributed as follows:
| Ukraine 2 | Lithuania 1 | Mongolia 1 | Russia 2 | Georgia 2 | Belarus 1 |
| Latvia 1 | China 3 | Morocco 1 | Armenia 1 | Romania 1 | Uzbekistan 2 |
The cost for one person that is supported amounted in 2000 to Dutch Guilders 60. This is based on the fact that should these members be administrated as members of developed countries, we would have received Dutch Guilders 60 per person.
The contributions to the Outreach fund up to May 2000 are
| Received in 1996 | 3,230 | Received in 1999 | 3,273 | |
| Received in 1997 | 5,633 | Received in 2000 | 611 | |
| Received in 1998 | 1,013 | |||
It is somewhat complicated to compare years, because some of the amount received one year is related to next year's invoices. Most contributions are paid together with the dues.
4. Joint BS-IMS directory. Every other year or so the Bernoulli Society has published an updated Membership directory. After some discussions and negotiations during 1998, it turned out that a joint membership directory with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) would be an attractive idea. After all, there is a substantial number of persons who are members of both societies.
The files with the respective membership lists were merged and joined into a combined list. The list together with various relevant facts, like the statutes, current officers, membership application forms of the societies, and so on, were finally put together under the efficient hands of Ms Elyse Gustafson of the IMS. The directory appeared during the spring of 1999.
Costs were split according to the number of members in the societies. For the Bernoulli Society the share was around USD 3500.
1. Membership. During the past years there was a steady decline in the number of members of the Society: 1635, 1584, 1564, 1386 in 1998-2001, respectively. The last drop is somewhat artificially large: I was recently informed that due to the fact that Polish members some years ago had been offered a new form of membership in which they would pay in convertible currency, the Polish section of the non-paying members (non-invertible currency) counting 41 members, has ceased to exist already for a while.
2. BERNOULLI. In spite of the increase in dues and subscription rates, a deficit of around Dutch Guilders 30,000 is expected for BERNOULLI in 2001, meaning 15,000 Guilders for the Bernoulli Society. However, again due to an expected income over expenditure for the Bernoulli Society of +15,000 Guilders, the total fund of the Bernoulli Society at the end of this year is expected to be roughly the same as at the end of 2000.
Mathisca de Gunst
Treasurer
Since the end of the year is approaching, I would like to inform you about next year's dues. As you can read in the Scientific Secretary report of the BS Council meeting and General Assembly the dues for 2002 will be raised by 4%. The actual numbers can be found on the membership form attached to this issue of Bernoulli News. Let me remind you that since last year the Bernoulli Society changed the dues and benefit structure, so that only the two Society publications, BERNOULLI journal and Bernoulli News, as well as the ISI Newsletter come to regular members at no extra cost. Apart from the usual special offers, there will be a couple of new special offers to encourage people, especially our younger colleagues, to join our society. These are:
Finally, I would like to encourage you to donate to the society's Outreach Program (see Bernoulli News Vol.8, No.1).Mathisca de Gunst
Treasurer
The new amended statutes of the Bernoulli Society have been approved in a membership vote; 76 members have voted to approve the new Bernoulli Society statutes, and there were no votes to disapprove the statutes. The small number of voters may be caused by the situation that no objections against the new statutes were left after its discussion in the society. According to the old statutes there is no quorum for membership votes. Therefore from now the amended statutes replace the old statutes. The proposed new statutes have been published in the previous issue of Bernoulli News (vol.8, No.1).
Daniel Berze
ISI
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