[GAP Forum] farewell

[Joachim Neubueser]

Dear Colleagues,

Please excuse that I take the  freedom to (ab-)use the GAP Forum for a
farewell letter.  I  have been in direct contact with  too many of you
since I initiated GAP in 1985 and even before to write individually.

Already  on March  28 I  have informed  Professor Edmund  Robertson as
Chairman of the GAP Council  about my resignation from the Council. 

On the  same day I have asked  the GAP developers to  find a colleague
who will take  over the job of maintaining the GAP  website that I had
accepted in  2004 after  Volkmar Felsch and  I had redesigned  the GAP
webpages to  their present format.  I  am glad that, as  I have heard,
Professor David  Joyner has accepted to  take over, he  has already in
the past many times helped  me with valuable suggestions for improving
the website and I wish him that  he will find your support that I have
enjoyed to get.

Last week I have asked to be removed from the mailing lists of the GAP
Developer's Group  and GAP  Support Group.  I  will now soon  leave my
room at  LDfM so that  you should no  longer count on reaching  me via
e-mail, phone, or letters at LDfM.


I want to thank all those who  have helped or even enabled me to serve
GAP.   In  particular I  want  to  thank  Professor Gerhard  Hiss,  my
successor in the chair of LDfM,  for most kindly allowing me to keep a
room at  LDfM for now almost 9  years after my retirement  and Dr. Max
Neunhoeffer for again and again patiently saving me from a mess on the
computer into which my ignorance of modern technology had brought me.


Having been a participating eye-witness of the growth of Computational
Group Theory since 1959, I have sometimes been asked about its history
as well as  that of GAP. 

For a brief  sketch of the first I  can refer you to a talk  I gave at
the 'Groups St Andrews at Galway' meeting in 1993 (see Doc/Talks/talks
on the GAP  website), but even better to  the historical introductions
of the books by Derek  Holt and Charles Sims (bibliographic details of
these  as well  as further  literature on  the topic  are on  the page
Doc/references of the GAP website).

For the second  I have collected a few documents  marking steps of the
development of GAP on the page Doc/History/history of the GAP website.


I neither  can nor want to withdraw  what I have said  in public, e.g.
in  publications and  the GAP  Forum.  In  particular I  keep strongly
convinced  that algorithms  of  Computational Group  Theory and  their
implementations are as well part  of mathematics as theorems and their
proofs  and  should  be treated  as  such,  that  is be  available  to
everybody free of charge and in source. I have expanded on that belief
also in the above mentioned talk at Galway.

On the other  hand I rather strongly dislike the  now popular trend in
the name  of 'research in  history' to tear  into the public  what has
never been  written for  that purpose. I  am therefore  destroying all
correspondence I have had with  colleagues since I started in 1951 and
I would be  grateful if you could do the  same with corespondence with
me, in case  you have kept any. Thank you  for respecting this request
even if you may find it strange.


I wish you further fun  and success developing, maintaining, and using
GAP.

All the best      Joachim Neubueser