Foreword to the Special Issue (original) (raw)

2023, Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology

On May 12, 2019 we shall celebrate the centenary birthday of the late Professor Wu Wen-Tsün (1919-2017), one of the most famous and influential mathematicians in China. Wu made foundational contributions to the field of topology and established Mathematics Mechanization as a discipline. He devoted himself to an academic career of more than six decades with leadership and extensive activities of research and education across mathematics to computer science and artificial intelligence. The scope of his research spans from algebraic topology, differential topology, and algebraic geometry to automated reasoning, symbolic computation, and game theory, and to the history of mathematics. His early work in topology was a major breakthrough, leading to well-known and now classical results including the characteristic class and formulas named after Wu. In the late 1970s, he pioneered the research of Mathematics Mechanization through his invention of the "Wu method", which revolutionized the field of automated reasoning. Wu received a number of prestigious awards including the Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning (1997) and the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences (2006, with David Mumford) for which the Press Release from the Shaw Prize Committee concludes with comments as follows: "Beginning with the traditional mathematical field of geometry, contributing to its modern development, and then moving into the new areas and opportunities which the advent of the computer has opened up, they [Wu and Mumford] demonstrate the breadth of mathematics. Together they represent a new role model for mathematicians of the future • • • " This special issue is dedicated to the celebration of Wu's centenary birthday. It contains 18 papers [1−18] on research subjects to which Wu made important contributions. Problems addressed in the papers include Hilbert's 15th problem and the problems of solving partial differential polynomial systems, automated geometric theorem proving and discovering, global