The last 10-15 years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of computers in pure mathematics research. Typical usage have occurred in proofs with a large amount of case analysis, or in the visualization of complicated structures. Well-known examples are the computer-aided proofs by Appel and Haken of the famous Four Color Conjecture, the demonstration by Lam et al of the non-existence of the projective plane of order 10 and the minimal surfaces found by Costa and subsequently proven by Hoffman and Meeks to be without self-intersection. Use of the computer as a visualization tool is ubiquitous in the study of geometry of surfaces and in the study of real and holomorphic dynamical systems. Large-scale algebraic manipulations are increasingly performed with the aid of symbolic algebra software.

As is often the case, one finds specialists in separate fields using very similar techniques, and there is a large amount of redundant work. For this reason alone there is a need for a common forum for the exchange of ideas and for sharing techniques among mathematicians using computer aids in their research. But there is an additional motivation to concentrate these areas of research. The 'ground rules' of the ancients, setting bounds between the tools and observations on one side and the abstract generalization on the other, are obvious when dealing with ruler and compass. However, they are not so obvious when one is dealing with the massive amounts of information provided by modern computers. Can observation of the successful completion of a computer program be regarded as a mathematical proof? We implicitly trust our pocket calculators to produce correct multiplication, but how far can we trust a computer program when it claims that a complex polynomial has a real root?

These are problems that mathematicians increasingly face. The problems will not go away. Mathematicians are continually forced to re-evaluate the nature of mathematical proofs and the role of computer assistance in abstract research.

At the same time, there is no question that a wealth of results, which even the extreme purists do not doubt, owe their discovery to some form of computer- aided experimentation. There is little doubt that if Gauss was alive today, he would be using the biggest workstation he could get his hands on. Mathematicians are embarking on a new 'golden era', using computers to visualize images and to compute formulas that were thought to be forever beyond the capacity of mortals. EmMa is our modest effort in this direction.