The Second IUPAP Topical Conference and the Third Taipei International Symposium on Statistical Physics

18 July - 24 July at Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei

Preface of the Proceedings    [ Physica A 221 (1995) ]

      The "Second IUPAP Topical Conference and the Third Taipei International Symposium on Statistical Physics: Nonlinear and Random Processes" (StatPhys-Taipei-1995) was held at the Academia Sinica (Taipei) and the National Taiwan Normal University during 18-24 July 1995. The meeting is the continuation of previous one. During 1-7 August 1993, the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica (Taipei) hosted the "First IUPAP Topical Conference and the Second Taipei International Symposium on Statistical Physics: Order-Disorder Transitions and Criticality" (StatPhys-Taipei-1993). The proceedings of that meeting were published in Physica A 205 (1994) 1-485, which describes in its preface the historical background of this series of meetings.

     In the opening section of StatPhys-Taipei-1995 at the Academic Activity Center of Academia Sinica (Taipei), Professors Yuan T. Lee, George Marx, Edouard Brezin, and M. K. Wu represented, respectively, Academia Sinica (Taipei), International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), IUPAP Commission on Statistical Physics, and the Physical Society located in Taipei to welcome the participants who came from Australia, Armenia, Barzil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine, USA and Taiwan. We had also sent invitation letters and entry permits to two physicists in Mainland China. Unfortunately, their government did not give them permits to participate.

     This volume contains most invited papers and some contributed papers presented at StatPhys-Taipei-1995 at the Academic Activity Center during 19-22 July and a section on "Teaching Statistical Physics" at the National Taiwan University on 24 July. This conference began with an invited talk presented by Professor Yuan T. Lee, the Nobel laureate of 1986 and the President of Academia Sinica (Taipei), on "Intermolecular Energy Transfer and the Statistical Theory of Unimolecular Dissociation", and ended with invited talks by Professor George Marx and Professor Yih-Yuh Chen.

        The StatPhys-Taipei-1995 brought together contributors and participants from communities of Physical mathematics, chemistry, earth sciences, and biological sciences. This indicates that the ideas (e.g. fractals, scaling, universality, relaxation time) and methods (e.g. Monte Carlo simulations) of statistical physics have been applied to wider and wider areas of sciences. Among future applications that we have not covered, and interesting and challenging direction of research is perhaps in areas of social sciences. In recent decades, more and more countries regardless of their racial backgrounds or geographical locations have increasingly respected the freedom of speech and adopted democratic processes to select their political leaders. This reminds us of the idea of universality in statistical physics. Fluctuations in voting behavior and their accumulative effects also bear similarities to fluctuations in physical system. However, different countries may have different relaxation times to approach this democratic state. Gladly, since 1992 the Republic of China in Taiwan has reached the democratic state. Her citizens have enjoyed a fully democratic political system and freedom of speech; they will reelect their legislators on 2 December 1995 and President on 23 March 1996 through popular vote. Besides scientific program and city and museum tours, participants of StatPhys-Taipei-1995 had also enjoyed some flavor of campaign activities during their stay in Taipei. The outcomes of elections on 2 December 1995 and 23 March 1996 are hard to predict. Perhaps, voting behavior is another interesting problem, where statistical physics might be able to make some contributions.

     Besides expressing our sincere thanks to the sponsors, the speakers, the section chairmen, the referees on contributed papers and participants of StatPhys-Taipei-1995, we are also grateful to the members of the following committees, for their suggestions, encouragement and contributions; the IUPAP Commission on Statistical Physics, the International Advisory Committee, and the Organizing Committee. Finally we should give special thanks to Professor Ta-You Wu for endowing a Chinese flavor to the conference handbook, writing Chinese words for us, Dr. Chi-Ning Chen for editing the conference handbook, Dr. Jau-Ann Chen for transforming many papers to TEX files versions for this proceedings, Miss Ann Lin for secretarial works, and many others for helping with various matters of the conference..

Chin-Kun Hu and K -t. Leung
Academia Sinica, Taipei
September 1995