Twenty years of international mathematics master at Leiden
Mathematicians from Bordeaux, Leiden and Padua have been working together for 20 years. In 2004, they started a two-year mathematics master's degree in Algebra, Number Theory and Geometry (Algant). They celebrated the 20th anniversary of this consortium at the Algant graduation ceremony in Leiden.
On 12 July, the Grand Auditorium of the Academy Building was buzzing with excitement. Twenty-four students were awarded their master's degrees during a festive graduation ceremony. They received their master's degrees from staff members of the eight universities the consortium now comprises.
For the students, the three-day graduation programme in Leiden was the end of two years of study at two different Algant universities. Their master presentations had lasted two days, concluding with a dinner cruise for students and staff on the canals and lakes in and around Leiden.
During the ceremony, younger Algant staff from Paris, Essen and Leiden shared their Algant impressions. Kevin Destagnol recalled his own student days in Paris, where Algant students from China and Italy impressed local French students with their maths knowledge. Jan Vonk, in Leiden and Algant since 2021, told a fairy tale to explain how, for him, the consortium managed to combine the finest arithmetic and geometric ingredients from five different Algant countries into a tasty soup, which he could now enjoy in Leiden. Johannes Sprang outlined the impact of the numerous international students on the social and culinary habits of the Algant institutes.
Consortium president and founding father Peter Stevenhagen described the early days of the consortium. In those days, the many hundreds of applications were done on paper, and there were generous Brussels scholarships especially for non-European students. A second and a third Erasmus Mundus scholarship in 2009 led to expansion of the consortium, and to a programme of cotutelle PhDs. More than 30 Algant dissertations were defended at Rapenburg between 2013 and 2020.
Peter Stevenhagen: 'Academic grants and initiatives typically last five or at most 10 years. That an academic programme like ALGANT is ready to continue after its 20th birthday, is very special.'
Nowadays, Algant has more than 450 alumni, who have created their own network that organises its own conferences. It was presented by former Algant student Francesco Campagna, who is now affiliated with the University of Clermont Auvergne. Before that, he was a postdoc in Hannover with an arithmetic geometrician who had himself obtained a PhD in Algant 10 years earlier. As you can see, Algant is widespread.
Having survived both covid and a decade without financial support from Brussels, the consortium is now ready for its third decade. Padova has indicated it is keen to take over the Algant headquarters from 2025.
The entire graduation ceremony can be watched on the ALGANT-website.
More about ALGANT
In 20 years, the ALGANT consortium has grown into a consortium of seven European universities:
- Bordeaux (France)
- Duisburg-Essen (Germany)
- Leiden (The Netherlands)
- Milan (Italy)
- Padua (Italy)
- Paris-Saclay (France)
- Regensburg (Germany)
and one Canadian university: Concordia in Montréal. Its headquarters were established in Bordeaux in 2004, and moved to Leiden in 2014. The online applications are processed in Essen. Read more about ALGANT.
Pictures thanks to Nicola Mazzara and Cinzia Clemente.