Indonesia lags behind

I am writing this letter in conjunction with my article Time to ponder over mathematics teaching (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 18, 2000).

In particular, I would like to discuss the data I obtained recently from http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/ concerning the total number of publications by mathematicians in six Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia (20); Malaysia (363); Singapore (1,503); the Philippines (155); Thailand (73); Vietnam (1,623).

This only confirms how our mathematical sciences have been left behind by our neighbors. I am not sure how other sciences perform, but I guess they would not differ much. Of course, I am aware that the Directorate General of Higher Education has various programs, including one to increase the number of international publications of our scholars, but I guess this is not sufficient.

In this era of knowledge, it is worrying how we as a nation can compete regionally, let alone globally.

HENDRA GUNAWAN

Visiting Researcher

at School of Mathematics

UNSW, Sydney