Dear Forum members,

On September 28 Charles Wright has informed the GAP Council that he
wanted to resign from the chair of the Council.

Charles has been the chairman of the Council since this was formed in
1995 in order to support the GAP project in particular then at the
time when its transition from Aachen to St Andrews was ahead. For 8
years now he has given most valuable advice and help to the
development of GAP and in the role of the editor in chief for the
procedure of 'accepting' GAP packages he has installed and developed
this process which to my knowledge has no precedent for software
systems but by now is not only well established within GAP but also
draws attention from outside. I think that I speak for all members of
the GAP team as well as for all users when I thank him most cordially
for all he has done for GAP.

While it has worked in many ways for GAP, often behind the scene, the
GAP Council never worked out a charter, so that there is no written
procedure fixed for the case of the resignation of a chairman. Hence
we have followed an often used rule that the oldest member organises
an election, and this role fell to me. At the end of the procedure I
have pleasure to inform you that the Council has elected Edmund
Robertson to its chair with 15 positive votes from its 16 members, Ed
himself, who had been nominated, wanted not to vote.

With the chair Ed will take over the role of the editor in chief for
the acceptance of packages, so correspondence about this should now go
to him.

You all know Ed from his long devoted work for GAP, so there is no
need to introduce him. It just remains to me to wish him much success
and also enjoyment for his work as Chairman of the GAP Council.

Joachim Neubueser