Applied science

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Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science

Abstract: The following text is a written version of the dinner speech, which was given by the author at the occasion of the 25th Workshop on Graphtheoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG ’99), Ascona, June 18, 1999. Dear participants, dear friends and especially dear Peter Widmayer, thank you for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about the history, the achievements and challenges of this series of 25 workshops, we can celebrate today. After listening to a great variety of exciting talks and hiking in the beautiful Valle Verzasca, I am sure, you will be very hungry – as me too – , thus, I promise you, I will be very short. First let me give you some remarks on the origin and starting events of these workshops. The first workshop took place in Berlin 1975 and was organized by Uwe Pape; to be more precise: originally it was the third meeting of the German chapter of the ACM, devoted to Graph-Languages and it was a combination of a tutorial on “Graph Languages”, presented by Victor Basili, and a workshop on “Graph Manipulation Systems”, extending this tutorial. The real starting point for this successful series of workshops however was, when Jörg Mühlbacher, Uwe Pape and me met at a conference in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt in autumn 1975. As there seemed to be very promising problems and applications in the field of Algorithmic Graph Theory, I suggested to install a series of workshops on “Graphtheoretic Concepts in Computer Science” and we agreed to try to realize this idea with enthusiasm and much effort. Thus, as a first consequence, the ACM-meeting was additionally defined to be the first workshop in our series, too, and the proceedings got the title “GraphLanguages and Algorithms on Graphs”. The publication was done by Carl Hanser-Publishing company in Munich, which had some connection to the German chapter of the ACM. Widmayer et al. (Eds.): WG’99, LNCS 1665, pp. 1–9, 1999. c © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999 2 Hartmut Noltemeier Now, initiating such a series of workshops, of course we had some goals in mind. First, we wanted to realize a real workshop within a familiar atmosphere, which allows a lot of social contacts, and with some special social events, too. (I remember very well some exciting sports events, e.g. a basketball competition (1985), a soccer tournament (1989), or some very fine concerts: Miriam Makeba, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, organ concert etc.). Secondly we would like to have this events not twice at the same location, but everytime at a new beautiful place as here in Ascona on top of Monte Verita, for example. Third and our main goal: we wanted to have a high-level event, which may cover many facets of this fascinating field, but should focus on most promising lines and potential applications of Graphtheoretic Concepts and Graph-Algorithms. Additionally we soon got aware of another goal, namely we should try to ensure some kind of independence, independence from societies as well as from specific institutions and industries and take the burden of preparing and organizing the workshops and take care for the publications within a small group of responsible, very interested colleagues. To give you an idea of this topic, let me mention only the following: We asked people from the ACM and the German Society for Computer Science (GI) for cooperation. Immediately there were at least five special interest groups, which would like to incorporate our activity or to participate at least in the program selection process. This showed us, that we were focusing on a central issue of widespread interest, but on the other hand showed us, too, that we would be immediately a minority within this setting and probably could not realize our specific idea of these events. Thus the next workshop was the first workshop following our specific ideas; it was organized by me at Göttingen University in 1976. Jörg Mühlbacher continued with the third Workshop in Linz/Austria in 1977. At that time we had no explicit program committee. Thus the three organizers were responsible for the quality of the contributions, at least in the following sense: we asked people to present recent work and submit a short abstract and we made a preselection, which was not very tough. But after the conference, we asked all participants to submit full papers within a couple of weeks, which should of course incorporate suggestions, stimulations and results of discussions of the workshop. All these papers were carefully reviewed by us and a lot of well-known experts, too. Silver Graphs: Achievements and New Challenges 3 The 25 WGs and their Chairs WG’75 U.Pape Berlin WG’76 H.Noltemeier Goettingen WG’77 J.Mühlbacher Linz WG’78 M.Nagl, H. J. Schneider Castle Feuerstein near Erlangen WG’79 U.Pape Berlin-Lichtenrade WG’80 H.Noltemeier Bad Honnef / Aachen WG’81 J.Mühlbacher Linz WG’82 H. J. Schneider, H.Göttler Neunkirchen near Erlangen WG’83 M.Nagl, J. Perl Osnabrueck WG’84 U.Pape European Academy Berlin-Grunewald WG’85 H.Noltemeier Castle Schwanberg near Wuerzburg WG’86 G.Tinhofer, G. Schmidt Stift Bernried near Munich WG’87 H.Göttler, H. J .Schneider Monastery Banz near Bamberg WG’88 J. van Leeuwen CWI / Amsterdam WG’89 M.Nagl Castle Rolduc near Aachen WG’90 R.H.Möhring Johannesstift Berlin WG’91 G. Schmidt, R.Berghammer Fischbachau near Munich WG’92 E.W.Mayr W.-Kempf-Haus, Naurod / Frankfurt WG’93 J. van Leeuwen Sports Center Papendal near Utrecht WG’94 G.Tinhofer, E.W. Mayr, Herrsching near Munich G. Schmidt WG’95 M.Nagl Haus Eich at Aachen WG’96 G.Ausiello, Foundation Konrad Adenauer, A.Marchetti-Spaccamela Cadenabbia / Lake Como WG’97 R.H.Möhring Müggelsee / Berlin WG’98 O. Sýkora, J. Hromkovič Smolenice Castle, Slovak Republic WG’99 P.Widmayer Monte Verita / Ascona Now, as the first three workshops attracted a lot of people and attention, we were happy to enlarge the set of organizers, and by this Hans-Jürgen Schneider and with him later on Manfred Nagl entered our board and strengthened our basis with respect to Graph Grammars and their applications. Both were organizing the fourth workshop at Burg Feuerstein near Erlangen, a wonderful place, too. In 1979 we entered the next cycle and Uwe Pape again did organize this workshop in Berlin, but at a very different place. In 1980 I did it again, this time at Bad Honnef near Bonn, when I was affiliated with the Technical University of Aachen. As I of course remember this event very well, I would like to use it as an example to give some more detailed comments and to point to some problems in general. 4 Hartmut Noltemeier