Is there any way of having a nicely formatted authors section in amsart?
By nicely formated I mean something like here:

Is there any way of having a nicely formatted authors section in amsart?
By nicely formated I mean something like here:

This is perhaps sub-optimal, but it reproduces the desired output:

\documentclass{amsart}% http://www.ctan.org/pkg/amsart
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\makeatletter
\g@addto@macro{\endabstract}{\@setabstract}
\newcommand{\authorfootnotes}{\renewcommand\thefootnote{\@fnsymbol\c@footnote}}%
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\LARGE
More than one Author with different Affiliations \par \bigskip
\normalsize
\authorfootnotes
Author A\footnote{Author A}\textsuperscript{1}, Author B\footnote{Author B}\textsuperscript{2},
Author C\footnote{Author C}\textsuperscript{1}, Author D\footnote{Author D}\textsuperscript{2} and
Author E\footnote{Author E}\textsuperscript{2} \par \bigskip
\textsuperscript{1}Department of Computer Science, \LaTeX\ University \par
\textsuperscript{2}Department of Mechanical Engineering, \LaTeX\ University\par \bigskip
\today
\end{center}
\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}
\section{A section}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}
\@setabstract is added to the end of the abstract environment to print it immediately after it is created. amsart sets the abstract in a box first, and only prints it with a call to \maketitle (which we circumvent in the above MWE).
Also, the footnote mechanism is altered within the title (which is centered) to print symbols via the macro \authorfootnotes.
Some modifications that may be required:
\setcounter{footnote}{0}.
amsartstyling of author information is "nice". You are asking for an "alternative". – Andrew Swann Dec 06 '12 at 09:22