AAPPS in its Fourth Decade January, 2020
The Association of Asia Pacific
Physical Societies (AAPPS) celebrated its thirtieth anniversary on the occasion
of the 14th Asia-Pacific Physics Conference (APPC) held at the Borneo
Convention Centre, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia in November 2019. The idea to form AAPPS originated from the first
APPC, held in Singapore in 1983, and the hope was to create an association of physical societies aimed at the promotion of physics in the Asia
Pacific region. Seven years later, AAPPS
was established in 1990 at the fourth APPC, and Chen-Ning Yang was the founding
president. The AAPPS has promoted
physics in this region through research, application and teaching, and has facilitated
international collaboration in these activities. Since its establishment, the publication of AAPPS
Bulletin, whose first issue was published in June 1991, and organization of
the APPCs have been two of the foremost activities of AAPPS.
At the 27th Council Meeting
held in 2012, AAPPS made bylaws for divisions. Following the successful
sessions of plasma physics at APPC12 in Makuhari, Japan, the Division of Plasma
Physics (DPP) was established under the leadership of the founding chair,
Mitsuru Kikuchi. This was the first step
allowing AAPPS to have an arena to promote specific fields of physics as in
national physical societies. This launch
was followed by the establishment of Division of Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Gravitation
(DACG), and the Division of Nuclear Physics (DNP).
These three divisions simultaneously
organized sessions on their respective fields of study at APPC14 for the first
time in the history of APPC and as such, these divisions played critical roles
toward the success of the conference, which was attended by nearly 500
participants. I believe that these changes
clearly indicate the future trajectory of AAPPS. With full divisional structure covering all
fields of physics, I am confident that AAPPS will become an association that truly
represents physics in one of the three major regions of the globe, comparable to the European Physical Society (EPS) and the American
Physical Society (APS), not only in name but also in terms of the scope of AAPPS’s
influence. There is much room for improvement, but we already have promising
signs of moving in the right direction since we have managed to organize
meetings toward division formation in condensed matter physics as well as in
particle physics during APPC14. As the new
president for the next three years, I will do my best to establish new
divisions.
Interestingly, the three currently
existent divisions, DPP, DACG, and DNP, each have different origin stories. As mentioned above, DPP was formed by the
program organizers of 12th APPC in Japan, which was attended by as
many as 400 plasma physicists. The
establishment of DACG was based on two series of regional conferences and
schools; specifically, DACG was formed by the combined efforts of organizers of
the International Symposium on Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (CosPA) and
those of the Asia Pacific School/Workshop on Gravitation and Cosmology (AP
School on GC). On the other hand, DNP owes
its entire entity to a pre-existent organization: ANPhA or the Asian Nuclear Physics
Association. Thus, there are many ways
to form a division, and we welcome physicists to rise to the challenge of forming
new divisions of AAPPS, so long as the concepts fit within the scope of the
future divisional structure, discussed over the years among the council and
member societies of AAPPS.
There are several distinct
advantages to forming a division in the area of your own expertise. First, AAPPS has an established history, and by
being one of AAPPS’s divisions, your scientific activities would be better
recognized as a representative one in the region. More importantly, internationally, AAPPS is regarded
as one of the three major physics associations, and its divisions are also
appreciated in the same way. For
example, among the currently existent three divisions, DPP has cooperation with
the divisions of plasma physics of both EPS and APS. AAPPS-DPP and the EPS-DPP are
mutually sending delegates and inviting conference committee members to each another.
In a similar fashion, the chairs of AAPPS-DNP and EPS-DNP mutually attend the respective
annual meetings of their counterpart as an observer. Finally, AAPPS-DACG has actually a longer
history than the division of gravitational physics of EPS, and the chair of
DACG was invited to their inaugural symposium. Last but certainly not least, the Asia Pacific
Center for Theoretical Physics (APCTP) has been providing generous funding of
USD 10,000 to each division to support its activities.
In recent
years, AAPPS and APCTP have been cooperating in many areas toward the common
goal of promotion of physics in the Asia Pacific region. Starting from its role helming the editorial
office of the AAPPS Bulletin, now the headquarters of AAPPS itself is
located at APCTP, at POSTECH’s campus in Pohang, Korea. I wish to realize a win-win
situation between AAPPS and APCTP through further cooperation.
Last year, we jointly established
the new AAPPS-APCTP Chen Ning Yang Award and celebrated the three winners at APPC14. Nominations for this award can be made not
only by (divisions of) member societies but also by individuals who attended
the most recent APPC. Thus, those who
attended APPC14 in Kuching have the right to make one nomination for the award
for the next three years. In this way, the
participants of APPC14 can be regarded as “virtual members” of AAPPS, which is a
small step toward introducing individual membership to AAPPS.
In the
previous council, under the leadership of former president Gui-Lu Long, we discussed
an array of issues and possibilities, with the aim of making AAPPS thrive. We invited Nobel laureates and other
distinguished scholars, including those who have made significant contributions
to the physics community of the region, to become AAPPS honorary fellows. We also set up rules to
endorse/cosponsor/sponsor physics activities in the region such as conferences,
workshops, and schools; consequently, AAPPS has already endorsed a number of
events according to these rules. We have
also been joined by a new member, the Kazakhstan Physical Society.
In
order to truly promote physics in all the regions of AAPPS, it is important to listen
to the voices of all of the member societies, which are hugely diverse in both
their respective sizes and also in their respective stages of development. I will hear opinions on how to extend and
reform the council for this purpose, which we will take time to seriously
discuss. To meet immediate needs, we
wish to endorse and co-host a number of physics events to contribute to the
advancement of physics in all the regions covered by AAPPS.
Let us cooperate together toward
this goal under the peaceful coexistence of all the relevant parties and make
this world more civilized and comfortable to live in.
Jun'ichi YOKOYAMA President, AAPPS
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