IMA members receive, as part of their subscription, copies of Mathematics Today. The original IMA members’ magazine was the IMA Bulletin, first published in 1965 following the founding of the institute in 1964. In 1996 the Bulletin re-branded as Mathematics Today, though kept the numbering system, so the most recent issue I received is volume 48, issue 1 for February 2012.

This week, on a trip to Salford for workshops run by our supported projects, I was lucky enough to spend a little time with a complete set of issues of IMA Bulletin/Mathematics Today. Here is a picture of volume 1, issue 1. A far cry from the latest Mathematics Today!

Edited by E.T. Goodwin of National Physical Laboratory and J. Howlett of the Atlas Computer Laboratory, serving under founding President Prof. M.J. Lighthill, no contents are listed but the issue contains:

• An update on the society, now registered to James Lighthill’s rooms at Imperial College, including notice of appointment of “the first permanent officer of the Institute”, Mr. Norman Clarke, who left the Institute of Physics and The Physical Society for appointment, and notice of the first AGM on Wednesday, 29 September 1965.
• Notice of a residential conference on “The State of the Art in Numerical Analysis” at Birmingham University in July.
• Notice of a symposium on “How to Teach the Art of Approximation” at Imperial College, London in May and repeated at University of Strathclyde in July.
• Notice of various “Lecture Meetings” in London, Manchester, the West Midlands, Bristol and Leeds, with the expressed hope of further meetings in Liverpool, Newcastle and Southampton. These were to “try to appeal to a wide range of membership and not be highly specialized”, with topics including wave propagation, satellite orbits, electrical manufacturing, OR, meteorology, blood flow and Christopher Zeeman’s “A Mathematical Model of the Brain”. A note records that “at some of the above centres it seems likely that local branches of the Institute will develop”, with the first Branch proposal coming from Manchester and a Scottish committee being formed “to cater for interests in Scotland”.
• Notice of a proposal for running examinations towards a H.N.C. in Mathematics.
• An article detailing “The Origins of the Institute”.
• A full list of members as of 1st January 1965, comprising 416 Fellows, 195 Associate Fellows, 42 Companion Members, 84 Graduate Members and 7 Student Members.