The year 2020 marked the 50th anniversary of the Finite Element Circus. To celebrate, a virtual circus was conducted via Zoom on November 6-7, 2020.

We had 146 participants and a full day and a half of technical talks, and reminiscences.

Departing slightly from Circus tradition, the ringmasters organized a some remarks by one of the founders of the circus Prof Ivo Babuska as well as past ring masters Richard Falk and Doug Arnold. During the Saturday lunch several other participants including Todd Dupont, Ridg Scott, Mary Wheeler, Ragnar Winther and Jinchao Xu all made comments about the history and contribution of the Circus to finite element theory and practice. Jim Bramble also was able to join us.

The Circus opened with a brief presentation in particular concerning the new edition of the Circus book by one of the two current co-ringmasters, Susanne Brenner

We were happy to have one of the founders of the Circus, Ivo Babuska join us. He set egalitarian tone of the Circus, and served as ring master for many years. His presentation on Circus history, philosophy and reminiscences follows:

Richard Falk and Doug Arnold's comments on the Circus (Download the documents mentioned by Prof Falk here) are in the following video

During lunch, several members of the Circus including Ridg Scott (Chicago), Mary Wheeler (Oden Inst, U. Texas Austin), Ragnar Winther (University of Oslo), Todd Dupont (University of Chicago), Jinchao Xu (Penn State) and Jim Bramble (Texas A&M and founding member) added their comments:

For title of the talks presented at the circus see our spreadsheet of Circus talks. Below is the order of talks: