Greeting

as a Guest of Honor
Hiroshi Fujita
University of Tokyo (Prof. Emeritus)

The Fourth Euro-Japanese Workshop on Blow-up

September 6-10, 2010:

Lorentz Center, Leiden, the Netherlands
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Gratitude:

1) to WS organizers,
Professors M. Fila,
J. Hulshof ,
J.L. Vazquez
and E. Yanagida
2) to WS coordinator,
Ms. Pauline Vincenten

My Particular Excitement:
Participating in this WS here, I am particularly
excited,
(1) To witness extensive current progresses in the
Blow-up Study for which I made an initial work in
1966, 44 years ago.
(2) To reflect on the strong link between Holland
and Japan since 17th century.

Old link between the Netherlands and

Japan

In 17th century, Tokugawa shogunate closed the

country's door to all Westerners except for Dutch
persons until the middle of 19th century.
During Edo period, Western civilization and
culture was conveyed to Japan only by Dutch
officers working at Holland Trading House in
Dejima, Nagasaki. As a typical example of those
Dutch intellectuals, Philipp Franz von
Siebold 1796-1866 is well-known in Japan
and, probably, in Leiden, too. This contribution by
Dutch experts during Edo period paved a way for a
rush and successful import of Western knowledge
to Japan and contributed much to modernization of
Japanese system after Meiji Restoration (1868), 4

Role of Blow-up Study in 21st Century

Mathematics in the 21st century is expected to
challenge deep, complicated, over-arching
problems arising from science, technology and
society.
It must be developed in the spirit of mathematical
sciences but I believe that nonlinear analysis to
pursue global behaviors and drastic changes of
the solution will play a core role in mathematical
activities, the blow-up study being its leading part.
Obviously, mathematics is an indispensable basis
of new sciences, e.g. global ecology. Nonlinear
analysis is expected to offer mathematical
methodology for arising fields such as bio5
medical sciences and bio-informatics.

Charms of Blow-up Study

(and of Nonlinear Analysis in general).
Charm 1. Realistic motivations can lead to charming
and challenging problems and theorems.
Fifty years ago, I struggled for the Navier-Stokes
equation, particularly for the still formidable
question of the global existence of 3D solutions,
while the 2D problems are OK.
Then in order to think over joint influence of the
degree of nonlinearity and the space dimension
for parabolic equations, I tried to consider
simplified but typical examples and reached the
following initial value problem.
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Comment on the naming of the equation:

Here, I wish to express my thanks to those who
call the equation above, Fujita's equation.
Namely, thanks for their friendly consideration of
the historical course of the matter.
I should feel hesitation in calling it so by myself,
due to some sense of Oriental modesty. The
equation is, however, too specific to be called a
semi-linear parabolic equation.

Charm 2. In nonlinear analysis, mathematicians can

experience joy of discovery of un-expected result as
well as joy of creation of new methods of proof.

In fact, when I started my study of Fujita equation,

there was no conjecture or numerical experiments
which suggest the existence of a single exponent
which controls the blowing-up situation as follows.

Charm 3. It is a good stage where challenging

collaboration with numerical experiments.
For nonlinear analysis like blow-up study,
significant numerical analysis is difficult to carry
out. Often, it requires developments of numerical
methods.
The situation is similar to the relationship between
theory and experiment in physics. Theoretical
analysis and numerical experiments can jointly
stimulate mathematicians' imagination and
deepen their insight to to solve the problem. This
would be characteristic to promising fields of
mathematical sciences in 21st century.
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This is what I want to say.

Thank you.

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