DiscussionWestern Europe France 32Germany 11Italy 9UK 16Switzerland 3Rest of Western Europe 14.5Eastern EuropeUSSR (Russia, Belarus,Ukraine, Georgia,22.5Lithuania)Hungary 5Romania, Czech Republic,Serbia, Poland, Bulgaria8North America Canada 4USA 36South America Argentina 3Brazil 2Near East Asia Israel 9Rest of Near-Eastern Asia(Iran, Lebanon, Turkey)2East and South Asia China 9Japan 6Korea 6Rest of East and SouthAsia (India, Taiwan)3AfricaEgypt, Morocco, SouthAfrica1Oceania Australia 2Table 2: Country of undergraduate studies. Number of ICM speakersper country of undergraduate studies.directly from undergraduate to PhD studies, this numbershould be taken with caution, and overestimates slightlythe actual duration of PhD studies. However, it does indicatethat the path to high level international recognitiondoes not require finishing a PhD very quickly.3. Most of the details for the geography of ICM speakersare given below. However, one can summarise themain conclusions in a few lines.a. The countries giving birth to the largest number ofICM speakers are: France (30), USSR (27), USA (26),UK and Germany (12), Italy and China (9), Hungary(8), Israel (7) and Japan and Korea (6). Europe (notincluding the USSR) has altogether 95.b. Geographic mobility is marginal between countryof birth and country of secondary education, whichis expressed, for a mathematically alert audience, bythe fact that the transition matrix is almost diagonal.Between birth and undergraduate studies, this is stillthe case. Apart from mobility inside the USSR, theonly significant flow is to the USA and to the UK:10 persons in our sample left their country to studyin the USA at an undergraduate level, the numberbeing 3 for the UK. It would be very interesting tosee how the numbers change in the next 20 years, inview of the aggressive recruiting policies of a numberof universities in the US and the UK, for instancegeared to International Mathematics Olympiad participants.c. The situation is, expectedly, very different at the graduatelevel. The main beneficiary of the flow of studentsis the USA (which attracted 58.5 PhD foreignbornstudents, representing two thirds of the total of84.5 ICM speakers who obtained their PhD in theUSA); the UK is a distant second, with 4.5 foreignbornout of 16.5 PhD students, and Israel third, with 3foreign-born out of 7 students. The countries that losethe most at that level are: USSR (with 10 departuresout of 27 students), Korea (6 out of 6), Hungary (6 outof 8) and Israel (3 out of 7).Interestingly, greater Europe, not including the formerUSSR, loses 23 individuals (who obtained their PhDin the US) out of a total of 95.d. Finally, where do they work?- The USA has the lion’s share, with 73 speakers workingthere, before France (35), the UK (19.5), Canada(10.5), Germany (8), Switzerland (7), Italy (6.5) andJapan and Korea (6).- In terms of mobility, the main fact emerging from thetables is that 30 individuals who obtained their PhDin the US leave the US at some point after their PhDto work in another country (often their home country),whereas 20 who obtained their PhD outside ofthe US work there.III. Some remarks on the methodologyThe data that I gathered and analysed are the following:- Gender.- Date of birth.- Country of birth.- Country of primary-secondary education (K-12).- Country and institution of undergraduate education;date of undergraduate degree.- Country, institution and adviser of PhD training.- Main positions held before present.- Present position if different from the one on the officialICM programme.My aim was to study the national origins of the 206speakers and to describe their mobility. Obviously, notall of the information is statistically interesting: if thereare 1 or 2 speakers born in country C, where they studyor work does not teach us much.I chose to restrict the study to the 206 mathematicianswho are either plenary speakers or sectionalspeakers in one of the mathematics sessions (Sections1 to 17), at the exclusion of the history, popularisationand education sessions – not that I think that these activitiesare less worthy (in view of the fact that a substantialpart of my present activity revolves preciselyaround history of mathematics, popularisation of mathematicsand mathematics education, it would be somewhatparadoxical).40 EMS Newsletter June 2014
DiscussionCountry of PhD – World. Number of ICM speakers per country or region of PhD studies.Table 3b: Country of PhD – Europe. Number of ICM speakers per country of PhD studies in Europe.I started by searching the internet for publicly availableinformation on each of the 206 speakers. I foundmore than 80 CVs on their webpages, plus other piecesof information. Of course, the mathematics genealogyproject (http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/) provedto be extremely useful. I wrote directly to 60 of them forwhom my information was lacking, asking them to fillin a short questionnaire, guaranteeing that I would useit only for statistical purposes. I received 37 responses.Further research, and some educated guesses, providedme with reasonably reliable information (again, only forstatistical purposes) for all but two speakers.The information that proved to be the most difficultto gather was birth years. Therefore I do not attempt tocompute interesting information like the average age ofPhD graduation (see also the remark below). However,the available data does not indicate a strong pattern ofextremely quick studies, particularly at the PhD level.There are significant national differences in the organisationof studies in the present sample. Indeed, theEMS Newsletter June 2014 41
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