Dear Colleagues, Please excuse that I take the freedom to (ab-)use the GAP Forum for a farewell letter. I have been in direct contact with too many of you since I initiated GAP in 1985 and even before to write individually.
Already on March 28 I have informed Professor Edmund Robertson as Chairman of the GAP Council about my resignation from the Council. On the same day I have asked the GAP developers to find a colleague who will take over the job of maintaining the GAP website that I had accepted in 2004 after Volkmar Felsch and I had redesigned the GAP webpages to their present format. I am glad that, as I have heard, Professor David Joyner has accepted to take over, he has already in the past many times helped me with valuable suggestions for improving the website and I wish him that he will find your support that I have enjoyed to get. Last week I have asked to be removed from the mailing lists of the GAP Developer's Group and GAP Support Group. I will now soon leave my room at LDfM so that you should no longer count on reaching me via e-mail, phone, or letters at LDfM. I want to thank all those who have helped or even enabled me to serve GAP. In particular I want to thank Professor Gerhard Hiss, my successor in the chair of LDfM, for most kindly allowing me to keep a room at LDfM for now almost 9 years after my retirement and Dr. Max Neunhoeffer for again and again patiently saving me from a mess on the computer into which my ignorance of modern technology had brought me. Having been a participating eye-witness of the growth of Computational Group Theory since 1959, I have sometimes been asked about its history as well as that of GAP. For a brief sketch of the first I can refer you to a talk I gave at the 'Groups St Andrews at Galway' meeting in 1993 (see Doc/Talks/talks on the GAP website), but even better to the historical introductions of the books by Derek Holt and Charles Sims (bibliographic details of these as well as further literature on the topic are on the page Doc/references of the GAP website). For the second I have collected a few documents marking steps of the development of GAP on the page Doc/History/history of the GAP website. I neither can nor want to withdraw what I have said in public, e.g. in publications and the GAP Forum. In particular I keep strongly convinced that algorithms of Computational Group Theory and their implementations are as well part of mathematics as theorems and their proofs and should be treated as such, that is be available to everybody free of charge and in source. I have expanded on that belief also in the above mentioned talk at Galway. On the other hand I rather strongly dislike the now popular trend in the name of 'research in history' to tear into the public what has never been written for that purpose. I am therefore destroying all correspondence I have had with colleagues since I started in 1951 and I would be grateful if you could do the same with corespondence with me, in case you have kept any. Thank you for respecting this request even if you may find it strange. I wish you further fun and success developing, maintaining, and using GAP. All the best Joachim Neubueser _______________________________________________ Forum mailing list Forum@mail.gap-system.org http://mail.gap-system.org/mailman/listinfo/forum
