Offer honor courses

To motivate the best students with a more advanced and demanding program, leading them to in-depth intense work and to the development of creativity and analytical and critical thinking skills, cultivating in the students the attitude of Mathematics professionals and the understanding of the Mathematics epistemology.

In 1984 began to be offered a honors course of Mathematical Anaçysis III, a course of the Spring Semester of the 2nd year of all IST degrees students. Several of the students who attended this honors course, known by "Turma Especial" of Mathematical Analysis III, later on became well succeeded Professors in the IST Mathematics Department.

This honors course offered an odd deal to top students, challenging them to voluntarily take a harder course demanding much more work from them, with the only reward to learn more and better. Not surprisingly, even without official recognition, several of the best students met the challenge, and many decided to follow a career in Mathematics.

The course began in 1984 and ran uninterrupted for 22 years, successively taught at the beginning by different Professors (Luis Magalhães, Manuel Ricou, Carlos Rocha). After 1987 it was mostly taught together with the students of the Mathematics and Physics undergraduate degrees programs, which began admitting 1st year students in 1986, except in some academic years when it was separately offered: in 1993/94 and 1994/95, taught by Luis Magalhães, in 1996/97 taught by Waldyr Oliva, in 1998/99 taught by Rui Loja Fernandes, who also offered in that academic year a honor course in Mathematical Analysis IV. In 2000, by decisive influence of Francisco Teixeira then IST Vice- President for Academic Affairs, these honor courses began to be recognized in IST official student enrollments and transcripts with the courses Linear Algebra and Mathematical Analysis I, II and III subdivided in sections A and B, with the sections A for honor courses and courses of the Mathematics and Physics undergraduate degree programs, until brought to end in 2006 by the implementation of the mostly negative European Bologna Reform, which fixed the first university degree length in 3 years, much influenced by UK, but with evident damages to Continental Europe university education.

in 1992/93 Luis Magalhães offered a honors course of Linear Algebra in parallel to the usual course for all IST 1st year students, lectured by him and with a computer component taught by José Sousa Ramos. A honors course in Linear Algebra was offered only once again in 2004/05, taught by Luis Magalhães. In 2002/03 Luis Magalhães, who had returned to IST after 5 years as President of the FCT - Science and Technology Foundation, offered in the Winter Semester the honors course on Mathematical Analysis III again by itself, since it was found that joining it with the courses for Mathematics and Physics undergraduate degrees students was not attracting students from other degree programs as before, and in the Spring Semester he offered for the first time a honors course of Mathematical Analysis IV, on one variable complex analysis, ordinary and partial differential equations and Fourier analysis, which he offered again in 2004/05. This led to expand the lecture notes Análise Complexa em Uma Variável e Aplicações by Luis T. Magalhães, Departamento de Matemática do IST, 1996, and to expand the lecture notes Luis T. Magalhães, Métodos de Resolução de Equações Diferenciais e Análise de Fourier com Aplicaçõess, Departamento de Matemática, IST, 2003, further slightly improved only in 2013. These were innovative and challenging textbooks for students in a 2nd university year, even internationally, that were intended to be translated and prepared for international publication, what could not be done then since Luis Magalhães took again a leave of absence form IST to be President of the Knowledge Society Agency between 2005 and the end of 2011.

The former lecture notes were translated to English, improved and much expanded with geometric theory of one variable complex functions and complex dynamics, leading to a book published only two decades later: Magalhães, Luis T., Complex Analysis and Dynamics in One Variable with Applications, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2025.