LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ -- With 300 speakers scheduled to give presentations, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) Eastern Section meeting at Rider University on Saturday and Sunday, October 5-6, has developed into a very large regional meeting.

Rider's Department of Mathematics and Physics has been busy the past 18 months helping the AMS organize the meeting that will draw 500 mathematicians from throughout the United States, Canada and abroad.

Among the countries from which speakers and attendees will come are France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Israel, India, Mexico, China, and Brazil, according to Dr. Anthony Bahri of Titusville, professor of mathematics at Rider and a local organizer of the meeting.

"This will be a significant mathematical meeting and one of the largest of its kind," he said. "This meeting will give Rider exposure to the mathematical research community and raise the profile of mathematics at the University."

Noted Dr. Ciprian Borcea of Lawrenceville, Rider associate professor of mathematics and also a local organizer, "This program is of high caliber. Just perusing the sessions, one see prominent names and a number of significant facts being reported."

Bahri said there will be 16 special sessions with approximately 20 speakers per session. "Many very well known people have organized special sessions,," Bahri added.

Among area mathematicians who have organized sessions are Charles Weibel of Rutgers University (algebraic K-theory), Fernando Villegas of Princeton University and Henri Rene Darmon of McGill University (automorphic forms), William Steiger of Rutgers and Ileana Streinu of Smith College (combinatorial and computational geometry), William Hoyt of Rutgers and Charles Schwartz of Rider

University (elliptic surfaces), Norman Levitt of Rutgers and Georgia Triantafillou of Temple University (geometric topology), Simon Thomas of Rutgers and Samuel Vovsi of Rider and Rutgers (infinite groups and group rings), Ciprian Borcea of Rider and Sylvain Cappell of New York University (mirror symmetry and toric varieties), Arthur Dupre of Rutgers and James Stasheff of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (operads, Hopf algebras, and categories), and Andrew Markoe of Rider and Eric Quinto of Tufts University (radon transforms and tomography).

A highlight of the conference will be a recital featuring soprano Lorna MacDonald and pianist Gait Sirguey, joined by baritone Elem Eley and clarinetist Robert Annis, on Saturday, October 5 at 8:30 p.m. in Bristol Chapel on the Princeton campus of Westminster Choir College of Rider University. MacDonald, who has appeared throughout the United States and Canada, was a member of the voice faculty at Westminster for six years and is currently head of the department of voice studies at the University of Toronto.

The AMS, founded more than 100 years ago, is the largest mathematical research society in the world.