The annual session to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding the Chinese Mathematical Society was held Monday in Weihai, a city in east China's Shandong Province.

The annual session, co-sponsored by the Chinese Mathematical Society and the Shandong University, is considered the largest-ever commemorative academic event in the country's maths science history.

About 400 mathematicians including 10 academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences were attending the session.

Also attending the session were a large number of the world's well-known mathematicians such as Yang Le, Zhang Gongqing, Ma Zhiming, Wen Lan from China as well as Efim Zelmanov, John Ball, Noga Alon, J.P. Bourguinon, M. Groetschel, N.M. Katz, Y.T.Siu from overseas.

And mathematicians from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kenya and South Africa also attending the opening ceremony of the annual session.

The current annual session has the theme of "Chance and challenge confronting China's Maths Circle", which will unfold wide-scale academic exchanges.

More significantly, a series of important maths prizes such as "the 7th Hua Luogeng Maths Prize", "the 10th Chen Xingshen Maths Prize", "the 7th Zhong Jiaqing Maths Prize" will be awarded duringthe session.

Meanwhile, the forum for the presidents of the China's maths colleges and institutes and the forum of China's maths education at the primary and middle schools will be staged in the same period.

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2005)