The Institute of Mathematics was established in 1947, its first director being Dr. Jiang Li Fu with the world renowned mathematician Dr. S. S. Chern acting for him. The Institute was moved to Taiwan in 1949, and the research activities almost came to standstill due the difficulties caused by the political situation. When the situation eased a few years later, the Institute started right away with its programs of the training of young talents. Within a few years staff members of the Institute started pursue of research in many areas of pure and applied mathematics. When Dr. Y. S. Chow assumed the directorship in 1970 efforts were made to improve the funding of researches as well as to extend research activities to Probability and Statistics. Since 1978, under the directorship of Dr. Ky Fan emphasis has been put on fundamental research, this being possible with the easing of research funding following the first Five-Year Plan of the Academia Sinica. Between 1984 and the conclusion of the third Five-year plan in 1996, the research area has been rapidly expanded to include major areas of mathematics under the directorship of Dr. Fon-Che Liu, Dr. Ko-Wei Lih, Dr. Chii-Ruey Hwang and Dr. Tai-Ping Liu.

The results obtained in the past few years are well recognized and most of them either appear in well-established journals or are presented at important international conferences.

In view of the profound influence of computers on the research of mathematics, the Institute will also lay emphasis on the research that will bring to foreground the computational aspect of mathematics as well as the research that will use computer as the primary or preliminary tool.

• Academia Sinica