Email with equations? From sci fiction to reality

A special mail program for exchanging messages with equations? There is already such a program! Sometimes it is unbelievable what sort of stuff those scientists come up with! About half a year ago, Russian scientists from Institute of Applied Mathematics and Kurchatov Institute of Atom Energy created a mail program for scientists. It is called Scientific Letter and allows its users to exchange messages that contain complex mathematical formulas. Scientists had been dreaming of it since the mid 90's and they finally got it. It is a revolutionary step in scientific correspondence. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has already placed Scientific Letter among the 20 most necessary programs for scientists.

The unique feature of Scientific Letter is that any person can type in any complex equation using a built-in editor with a speed very close to typing a characters. Most importantly, the recipient of the message does not have to have Scientific Letter installed. Users of MS Outlook and other popular e-mail clients see message contains text with equations in LaTeX notation (the standard for scientific articles). Users of Scientific Letter see incoming message with graphical equations.

Scientific Letter also allows the user to keep messages in the LaTeX format and to insert them into articles for scientific magazines. Moreover, Scientific Letter is a full-scaled mailer with address book, SMTP, and POP3 support.

While the program has been released only very recently, it has already gained the use among the following: mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and other scientists. The mailer is very easy to learn; in fact, most people become proficient with Scientific Letter after using it for only one hour.

Related Links:

• Download Scientific Letter.
• Scientific correspondence made easy. - July 27, 2004
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