By Claude-Michel Brauner

University of Bordeaux, France

The first time I visited China was in June, 1988, when I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a conference in Shanghai organized by the late Professor Guo Benyu and Academician Shi Zhongci. Recently, I read the tragic novel by Wang Anyi, “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” which follows a beauty queen from 1945 to her murder in 1986. My memories of Shanghai in 1988 are a reflection of Wang’s description of Shanghai in the 80s. On my way to Shanghai, I visited Peking University and Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Interestingly, Shi Zhongci was a professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) from 1965 to 1986.  In 1993, Professor Shi became the first director of the State Key Laboratory of Scientific and Engineering Computing (LSEC), located in the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing of CAS. The current director is Professor Zhang Linbo (my academic brother). I have had the great pleasure to meet Academician Shi Zhongci and his wife again several times.

After my visit in June, 1988, I waited several years to return to China. In 2009, Professor Shen Jie (also one of my academic brothers) invited me to join his newly-established laboratory in the School of Mathematical Sciences of Xiamen University (XMU). The campus of XMU, located adjacent to the Nanputuo Temple, is famous for its beautiful scenery and park-like environment.

My initial contract was for only three years. However, I eventually spent eight academic years as a member of the faculty of the School. For three of those years, I served as a High-end Foreign Expert within the Thousand Talents Program. My role had several components: teaching at the graduate and undergraduate level, advising PhD students, publishing papers, and assisting and promoting international relationships for the School, and with France in particular. I developed research programs in two main directions: first, mathematical models in biology with particular attention to HIV propagation; and second, mathematical models in combustion, including instability of flames. The latter direction is related to stability issues in Free Boundary Problems, where a flame is viewed as a free interface. As is well known, interface phenomena are commonplace in physics, chemistry, biology, and the various disciplines that bridge these fields.  In Xiamen, I advised three PhD students who, after a stay in France or the United States, are currently assistant or associate professors at Chinese universities. They have become three of my sixty-nine scientific descendants.

As the representative of the French Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in China, I was involved in the development of Sino-French relations in applied mathematics during the ICIAM 2015 Congress in Beijing, and also within the framework of the Sino-French Associated International Laboratory (LIASFMA), co-chaired by Professors Li Tatsien (Fudan University) and Jean-Michel Coron (Sorbonne University). In June 2014, LIASFMA was established at Xiamen University on the occasion of the first Sino-French Conference on Computational and Applied Mathematics as part of the celebration to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and China. The Office for Science and Technology of the French Embassy in Beijing and the CNRS China Office have always granted me their full support.

In September, 2017, I departed Xiamen University as I had received an invitation from Professor Liang Xing to join the School of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) as a long-term visiting professor. It was sad for me to leave what had been my professional environment for so long and the city of Xiamen, which in 2016 conferred upon me the Egret Friendship Award.  However, the time had come for me to face a new challenge in one of the top universities in China and Asia. At USTC I have been given an exceptionally warm welcome and have already taught a high level course. Simultaneously I initiated a new research program about Hopf bifurcation in premixed flames. Incidentally I had an interesting contact at the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS). As shown above, mathematical modeling of combustion and flame is one my favorite topics, because flame is an intricate physical system involving fluid dynamics, multistep chemical kinetics, and molecular and radiative heat transfer.

During my years in China, I have gained a lot, from many aspects: scientific, cultural, and human. I have visited several places in Chinese mainland, as well as Hong Kong. I have come to love China and its culture. I have formed many everlasting Chinese friendships, both here in China and also in France. Although, by now, China has become my second country, I sometimes feel totally lost. For instance, when I go down a stairway, I wonder what awaits me; will I arrive in Paris (where my family lives) or in Hefei? In conclusion, I would like to quote the following words of Kongfuzi: Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life. That describes perfectly a mathematician’s life!

Source: USTC