Christer Oscar Kiselman

Welcome to my web site!

How to reach me
Uppsala University
Department of Information Technology/Vi2
P. O. Box 337
SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden
E-mail address: kiselman@it.uu.se; private address: christer@kiselman.eu.
Cell telephone: +46 708 870 708.

• In the words of L. L. Zamenhof, I am a human being.
• More precisely, I am a mathematician who speaks Swedish, Esperanto, English, and French.
• I am also a guest professor at Uppsala University, Sweden. You can meet me at the Department of Information Technology, which is situated at Polacksbacken, some two kilometers south of downtown Uppsala. I have collaborated with this institute for many years. I am in Room 102138 (House 10, Level 2, Office 138).
• Gustaf VI Adolf, King of Sweden, appointed me to a position at Uppsala University in 1968, when I was not yet 29 years old. I served during 38 years, until April 2006.
• I was Professor Emeritus from May 2006 until September 12, 2014, when I lost my workplace at the Department of Mathematics of Uppsala University and was asked to remove all my personal belongings from the room where I had used to work.
• On September 15, 2014, I was invited to be Guest Professor by a decision made by Professor Michael Thuné, Director of the Department of Information Technology, following a recommendation by Professor Ingela Nyström, Director of the Division of Visual Information and Interaction.
• I have advised eighteen doctoral student to their degree, of which the four last ones after my retirement in 2006. They are from seven different countries, and our discussions have been conducted in four different languages.

  While in office, I was the scientific advisor of fourteen doctoral students, who successfully defended their theses (1974—2005). Since then I have been the principal scientific advisor of four PhD students, who got their degrees in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2016; the first two at Uppsala University, the third a Stockholm University, and the last at l'Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako (USTTB).

• Bibliography
• Curriculum Vitae
• Research interests
• PhD students
• Teaching
• Presentation at the Nitobe Symposium on Languages and Internationalization in Higher Education: Ideologies, Practices, Alternatives in Reykjavík, 2013 July 18—20: Language choice at Uppsala University, 1477—2013 (full presentation). A small file with four screens on each page.
• Who are my mathematical ancestors? Have a look.
• Annual reports
  • 1973/1974 — 2003: Nineteen annual reports of the Department of Mathematics for the fiscal years 1973/1974 through 2003 have been published. Of these, fourteen were in Swedish, and five, viz. those from 1997—2001, were in English.
  • 2003—2006: The Department of Mathematics did not give out any annual reports for the years 2004 and later. My contribution to the Annual Report for 2003 as well as material intended for theoretically possible Annual Reports for the three years 2004—2006.
  • 2007—2013: Material intended for theoretically possible Annual Reports for the seven years 2007—2013.
  • 2014: Material for the Annual Report 2014. See also the Annual Report of the Centre for Image Analysis 2014.
  • 2015: Material for the Annual Report 2015. See also the Annual Report of the Centre for Image Analysis 2015.
  • 2016: Material for the Annual report 2016.
  • 2017: Material for the Annual report 2017.
  • 2018: Material for the Annual report 2018.
  • 2019: Material for the Annual report 2019.
  • 2020 and 2021: Activity Report for the years 2020 and 2021.
• Douady's Coffee Meter
  Adrien Douady (1935—2006) constructed a Coffee Meter during a summer school in Otaniemi (Otnäs) near Helsinki in June of 1967. A handwritten document explains how it works:
  
  "Drink a cup of coffee. Test whose lecture you can follow during 30 mn. This defines a cut in the set of mathematicians. This cut measures the strength of the coffee."
  
  The strongest coffee on the scale is marked with the name of Marcel Brelot (1903—1987), and the weakest coffee is marked with the name of Laurent Schwartz (1915—2002). To follow Jean Dieudonné (1906—1992) you need coffee a bit stronger than that for Schwartz. The name Kiselman also appears on Adrien's meter, and my lecture was actually the reason why he constructed the meter in the first place. You need coffee just a little stronger for me than for Dieudonné. I am inclined to consider this Coffee Meter as a strong letter of recommendation for me. (There are several other names on Adrien's scale that I withhold.) Later, during the academic year 1967—1968, I was Adrien's colleague in Nice, where Jean Dieudonné was Dean.
• I have been or am still involved in the planning of the following congresses or conferences.
  • Complex Analysis and Differential Equations. A Marcus Wallenberg Symposium in Honor of Matts Essén. June 15—18, 1997, Uppsala, Sweden. (Chair of the Organizing Committee.)
  • International Symposium on Language Planning and Lexicology, ISLPL, Zagreb, July 28—30, 2001. (Initator and main organizer.)
  • The First French-Nordic Summer School in Mathematics, EEFN, 2001-06-26—07-03. The venue was the Erken Laboratory, a research station on the shores of Lake Erken. (Initiator—together with Jean-Marie Guastaviono—and main organizer.)
  • Preparation of Mathematics Teachers for the Future, an international research symposium held in Malmö 2003-05-05—07. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • Symposium on Communication Across Cultural Boundaries, held in Gothenburg 2003-08-02—03. (Initiator, Main Organizer and President of the Program Committee.)
  • International Conference on Analysis in Several Complex Variables, Sundsvall 2004-06-21—24. (Member of the Scientific Committee.)
  • Fourth European Congress of Mathematics, 4ECM, Stockholm 2004-06-27—07-02. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • First International Conference on Several Complex Variables and Complex Geometry (China SCVCG1), Beijing 2004-08. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • Tenth International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, IWCIA, Auckland 2004-12-01—03. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • 24^thNordic and 1^st French-Nordic Congress of Mathematicians, Reykjavík 2005-01-06—09. (Member of the Scientific Committee.)
  • Conference in Complex Analysis in Honor of Henri Skoda, Paris 2005-09-12—16. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • Rolf Schock Prize Meeting in Mathematics, Stockholm 2005-10-26. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • Digital Geometry for Computer Imagery, DGCI, Szeged, October 25—27, 2006. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • GeoNet VI, Porto-Novo, 2007-06-11—16. (Scientific director for the section Discrete and combinatorial geometry, comprising the first two days.)
  • International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology, ISMM, Rio de Janeiro 2007-10-10—13. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • Digital Geometry for Computer Imagery, DGCI, Lyon, 2008-04-16—18. (Member of the Reviewing Committee.)
  • Nordic-Russian Symposium in Honor of Vladimir Maz'ya on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Stockholm, 2008-08-25—27. (Member of the Organizing Committee.)
  • Esperantology Conference, Bialystok, 2009-07-30 12:00—15:45. (Organizer.)
  • Regional and Interregional Co-Operation to Strengthen Basic Sciences in Developing Countries, Addis Ababa, September 1—4, 2009. (Member of the International Advisory Committee.)
  • Mini-Conference on Digital Geometry, Uppsala, September 24, 2009. (Main organizer.)
  • 15th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2009-09-30—10-02, Montréal (QC), Kanada. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • 13th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis (IWCIA'09), Cancun, Mexico, 2009-11-24—27. (Member of the Reviewing and Program Committee.)
  • Esperantology Conference, Havana, 2010-07-22. (Organizer.)
  • 16-th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2011-04-06—08, Nancy, France. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • Conference on Several Complex Variables on the Occasion of Józef Siciak's 80th Birthday, 2011-07-04—08, Kraków, Poland. (Member of the Scientific Committee.)
  • 17-th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2013-03-20—22, Sevilla, Spain. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • 11th International Symposium on Mathemathical Morphology (ISMM 2013), 2013-05-27—29, Uppsala, Sweden. (Member of the Organizing Committee, Invited Speakers' Chair and Member of the Program Committee.)
  • Esperantology Conference, Reykjavík 2013-07-25 09:00—13:00. (Organizer joint with Mélanie Maradan.)
  • 18-th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2014 September 10—12, Siena, Italy. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • 12th International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology (ISMM 2015), Reykjavik, 2015 May 27—29. (Member of the Technical Program Committee.)
  • 19-th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2016 April 18—20, Nantes, France. (Member of the Program Committee; member of a committee to award a prize for the best student paper.)
  • 13th International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology (ISMM), held 2017 May 15—17 in Fontainebleau, France. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • 20-th IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), 2017 September 19—21, Vienna, Austria. (Member of the Program Committee.)
  • Dagstuhl Seminar No. 18422: Shape Analysis: Euclidean, Discrete and Algebraic Geometric Methods held 2018 October 14—19 at Sloß Dagstuhl, Saarland. (One of four organizers.)
  • 21-st IAPR International Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI), joint with 14th International Symposium on Mathematical Morphology (ISMM), and now called Discrete Geometry and Mathematical Morphology (DGMM), first planned to be held in Uppsala in December 2020. It finally took place 2021 May 24—27. (Honorary Chair.)
• Professor Luis Caffarelli received the 2005 Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics on October 27, 2005. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences organized a symposium in his honor the day before.
• Professor Mikio Sato received the 1997 Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics on October 23, 1997.
• I was the editor of the journal Esperantologio / Esperanto Studies (1999—2018).
• I have compiled a list of some papers on mathematics in Esperanto. There is also information in general about Esperanto on the web.
• In the University Museum in Uppsala there was earlier a model of the Costa surface. It was a symbol for the math department of the university.