DOCSLIB.ORG

The Australian Mathematical Society and Funded and Supported by an ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to Professor Nalini Joshi

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Australian Mathematical Society and Funded and Supported by an ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to Professor Nalini Joshi The Australian Mathematical Society (Inc) Reports for the one-hundred-and-twenty-first Council Meeting 2016 Reports on meetings Report from Vice-President (Annual Conferences) Reports from the Society’s subcommittees Reports from Special Interest Groups Report from NCMS Report from AustMS Public Officer Award committee reports Page 1 of 87 ANZMC8—59th Australian Mathematical Society Annual Meeting Monday September 28 to Thursday October 1, 2015. Vladimir Ejov September 23, 2016 The 59th Australian Mathematical Society hosted by the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics and Statistics of Flinders University, from Monday September 28 to October, 1, 2015. Thirteen plenary speakers in 2015 - nine international and 4 from Australia- are internationally renowned in their respective fields, including two Fields medalists. Plenary speakers represented a cross-section of mathematics across the world today. Four plenary speakers in 2015 were women. The plenary speakers were Martino Bardi (University of Padova), Manjul Bhargava (Princeton), Aurore Delaigle (Uni- versity of Melbourne), James Demmel (University of California, Berkeley), Jerzy Filar (Flinders University), Clement Hongler (EPFL Switzerland), Frances Kirwan (University of Oxford), Frances Kuo (University of New South Wales), Michael Shelley (New York University), Terence Tao (University of Californiq, Los Ange- les), Ruth Williams (University of California, San Diego), Konstantin Zarembo (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), Wadim Zudilin (Newcastle). There were 362 registered mathematicians registered for a four-day program cov- ering a wide range of topics in pure and applied mathematics and statistics. There were 20 special sessions comprising 282 presentations including 13 keynote speakers. The special session organisers worked hard and e↵ectively as they created a high quality meeting. Many of their e↵orts were inspirational and created confidence that Aust MS annual meetings are of consistently high quality. The meeting was preceded by the AustMS Early Career Researcher Workshop held at the new Tonsley campus at Flinders University the Melbourne Parkview Hotel in St Kilda with 75 registered participants, It was organised by Norman Do (Monash University), Pouya Baniasadi (Flinders University) and Dale Ward (Flinders University) and included six invited speakers. The evening program consisted of social events and public lectures. On Sun- day evening the Women in Mathematics Dinner with 82 registered participants was hosted at Tonsley building, Flinders University by the Women in Mathemat- ics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society and funded and supported by an ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to Professor Nalini Joshi. On Monday evening there was a Reception at Adelaide Town Hall, followed by public lecture by Terence Tao and Musical Recital conducted by Jan Slo- vak and Ray Booth. On Tuesday night a simultaneous chess competition was held at Flinders University featuring Australia ranked 2 female player Giang Nguyen. The Conference Dinner was held on Wednesday evening at Stamford Glenelg Hotel. The indigenous opening address was read by Auntie Georgina Williams. The conference was opened by the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Christ- pher Pine, followed by Flinders University Vice Chancellor Colin Stirling. Also 1 Page 2 of 87 2 participated SA Government representative Katrine Hildyard, SA MP for Elder Annabel Digance and Aust MS President Tim Marchant. This opening ceremony was followed by the announcement of the award of the Australian Mathematical Society Medal to Scott Morrison by Tim Marchant. The talk by the medal winner was given on Wednesday October, 30 during morning plenary session. There were 86 registered students at the conference, many competing for one of the student prizes for best talk. The winners were Matthew Tam (University of Newcastle) for the talk ”Reconstruction Algorithms for Blind Ptychographic Imaging” and and Murray Neuzerling (La Trobe University) for the talk ”‘Using algebra to avoid robots”. The Mathematics Education Special Session was extremely successful. It was one of the largest special sessions at the meeting with 26 registered participants. In combination with the recently created Mathematics Education Special Interest Group of the AustMS this bodes well for the Mathematics Education Special Session in future years. The conference had an income of $??? and expenditure of $??? including re- payment of seed money back to the Australian Mathematical Society. It gratefully received support from the Australian Mathematical Society, the Flinders University, MASCOS and AMSI. I would like to thank all of those who helped to make Aust MS 2015 such a great success. In particular, thanks to the Program Committee members, the special session organisers, the local organisers, the ECR workshop organisers, the sta↵and student volunteers in the School of Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics at Flinders University, John Banks for setting up the registration system; all played a vital role in the smooth running of the conference. Special thanks to the Australian Mathematical Society and Flinders University for supporting this conference in various ways. The next annual meeting is being hosted by ANU. I wish John Urbas and his team all the best in their preparations for the 60th Annual Meeting. Page 3 of 87 The 2015 Early Career Workshop of the AustMS, Budget Report 27 October 2016 Aims The Early Career Workshop (ECW) of the Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) is intended for graduate students and early career academics working in the mathematical sciences. The workshop brings these people together to discuss issues concerning ECRs in the mathematical sciences and to obtain valuable career advice through various presentations, panel discussions, and other activities. Organisers Michael Coons (University of Newcastle, AustMS Early Career Representative) Norman Do (Monash University, AustMS Early Career Representative) Dale Ward (Flinders University, local organiser) Dates and Host Flinders University hosted the event at their Tonsley Park Campus. The upshot of this is that they processed all of the necessary catering payments for the ECW and (presumably) invoiced AMSI and AustMS after the event. Demand The number of participants for the ECW has been relatively high in recent years, with 57 registered participants in 2012, 64 in 2013, and 73 in 2014. Recall that starting in 2015, the standard ECWs will now be held only in even years. As 2015 was an odd year, it was decided that a shorter one-day workshop would be held. As this was the first ‘short workshop’, we could only assume that the demand would be constant, so assumed around 70 participants. We planned, and to the best of my knowledge paid, for that number. Format We followed a similar format to the previous workshops, but with three speakers. They were Bj¨orn R¨u↵er (Newcastle), Anne Thomas (Sydney), and Timothy Trudgian (ANU). During the forum, we were fortunate to have Scott Morrison (ANU) join us. The topic was ‘Research’ as broadly defined. Budget summary The budget for the 2015ECW was a real issue. No preliminary budget was given or agreed upon; the funding was only agreed upon as we were negotiating with caterers. There is no total amount approved, but only the bid for $44 per person for catering and a $600 budget for dinner. For dinner, because of the Sunday workshop, there was a huge overlap with the Women in Maths Dinner, so I just took the remaining people to a local pub. We were fortunate that all of the speakers and organisers had other funds, so that the ECW did not incur any costs for speakers other than gifts—a bottle of South Australian shiraz for each of them (3). Item Cost Catering (excluding dinner, 70 people) 3080.00 Dinner at local pub (15 people) 347.00 Gifts 92.97 Total 3519.97 Final comment After dealing with the budgets and organising this even for one-day (really only a ‘fat half day’), I don’t think that these smaller odd-year workshops are worth it. We had many people sign up and not many come, probably about 50 of the 70 showed up. The quality of the conversations was good, but everything was too rushed with ECW the afternoon before the main meeting. In the future, I suggest putting all of the e↵ort into the even-year main ECWs. 1 Page 4 of 87 SECOND EARLY CAREER WORKSHOP OF THE AUSTRALIAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ANZIAM CONFERENCE 6 – 7 FEBRUARY 2016, QT CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA Melanie Roberts, Roslyn Hickson, Leesa Sidhu PURPOSE The purpose of the Early Career Workshop (ECW) is to support Early Career Mathematicians (ECMs) in their career development, through an event that fosters networking and professional development, as well as to encourage membership of ANZIAM and the Society and participation in the ANZIAM conference. TARGET AUDIENCE The Early Career Workshop is open to members of AustMS, or the ANZIAM division through the New Zealand Mathematics Society, within 5 years of conferral of their PhD. This includes current research higher degree candidates. Career interruptions are recognised and considered on a case-by-case basis. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ECW The ECW arose from a proposal made at the 51st Annual AustMS meeting at La Trobe University in 2007. It was suggested that an annual workshop be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting. In 2014 the ECW was held in conjunction with the ANZIAM meeting for the first time. The ECW now alternates between
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Cores of Symmetric Graphs
    J. Aust. Math. Soc. 85 (2008), 145–154 doi:10.1017/S1446788708000815 CORES OF SYMMETRIC GRAPHS PETER J. CAMERON ˛ and PRISCILA A. KAZANIDIS (Received 17 February 2008; accepted 1 April 2008) Communicated by Peter M. Neumann Dedicated to Cheryl Praeger for her sixtieth birthday Abstract The core of a graph 0 is the smallest graph 1 that is homomorphically equivalent to 0 (that is, there exist homomorphisms in both directions). The core of 0 is unique up to isomorphism and is an induced subgraph of 0. We give a construction in some sense dual to the core. The hull of a graph 0 is a graph containing 0 as a spanning subgraph, admitting all the endomorphisms of 0, and having as core a complete graph of the same order as the core of 0. This construction is related to the notion of a synchronizing permutation group, which arises in semigroup theory; we provide some more insight by characterizing these permutation groups in terms of graphs. It is known that the core of a vertex-transitive graph is vertex-transitive. In some cases we can make stronger statements: for example, if 0 is a non- edge-transitive graph, we show that either the core of 0 is complete, or 0 is its own core. Rank-three graphs are non-edge-transitive. We examine some families of these to decide which of the two alternatives for the core actually holds. We will see that this question is very difficult, being equivalent in some cases to unsolved questions in finite geometry (for example, about spreads, ovoids and partitions into ovoids in polar spaces).
    [Show full text]
  • News in Asia Pacific Region
    Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter News in Asia Pacific Region News from Australia researchers from other countries, and to run events and public outreach programs connected to research in the Conference in Honour of Cheryl Praeger’s 70th mathematical sciences. Wherever possible SMRI will Birthday act in concert with other institutes, avoiding unnecessary duplication and competition, to help bring about the The Third International Conference on Group Actions greatest benefit for the discipline nationally. and Transitive Graphs was held at SUST Shenzhen, China, 12–14 October 2018, in honour of Cheryl Awards and Other Achievements Praeger’s 70th birthday. Australian National University The Sydney Mathematical Research Institute • Dr. Anthony Licata was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship in Round 1 of 2018. On 12 November 2018, the University of Sydney officially launched a new “flagship initiative”, the Sydney • ANU alumnus Allan Sly is one of the 25 recipients Mathematical Research Institute (SMRI), with Professor of the 2018 MacArthur Fellows Program, a grant that Geordie Williamson as Director and Anthony according to the foundation ‘celebrates exceptional Henderson as Executive Director. The webpage is creativity and significant accomplishment with the https://sydney.edu.au/research/centres/mathema- promise of important future advances and the ticalresearch-institute.html. potential to facilitate subsequent creative work’. The MacArthur Fellowship is a ‘no strings attached’ This launch followed one of the most successful and award in support of people, not projects. Each rapid funding drives in Australian mathematical fellowship comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the history, led by Professor Jacqui Ramagge (the Head of recipient.
    [Show full text]
  • Geometry, Combinatorial Designs and Cryptology Fourth Pythagorean Conference
    Geometry, Combinatorial Designs and Cryptology Fourth Pythagorean Conference Sunday 30 May to Friday 4 June 2010 Index of Talks and Abstracts Main talks 1. Simeon Ball, On subsets of a finite vector space in which every subset of basis size is a basis 2. Simon Blackburn, Honeycomb arrays 3. G`abor Korchm`aros, Curves over finite fields, an approach from finite geometry 4. Cheryl Praeger, Basic pregeometries 5. Bernhard Schmidt, Finiteness of circulant weighing matrices of fixed weight 6. Douglas Stinson, Multicollision attacks on iterated hash functions Short talks 1. Mari´en Abreu, Adjacency matrices of polarity graphs and of other C4–free graphs of large size 2. Marco Buratti, Combinatorial designs via factorization of a group into subsets 3. Mike Burmester, Lightweight cryptographic mechanisms based on pseudorandom number generators 4. Philippe Cara, Loops, neardomains, nearfields and sets of permutations 5. Ilaria Cardinali, On the structure of Weyl modules for the symplectic group 6. Bill Cherowitzo, Parallelisms of quadrics 7. Jan De Beule, Large maximal partial ovoids of Q−(5, q) 8. Bart De Bruyn, On extensions of hyperplanes of dual polar spaces 1 9. Frank De Clerck, Intriguing sets of partial quadrangles 10. Alice Devillers, Symmetry properties of subdivision graphs 11. Dalibor Froncek, Decompositions of complete bipartite graphs into generalized prisms 12. Stelios Georgiou, Self-dual codes from circulant matrices 13. Robert Gilman, Cryptology of infinite groups 14. Otokar Groˇsek, The number of associative triples in a quasigroup 15. Christoph Hering, Latin squares, homologies and Euler’s conjecture 16. Leanne Holder, Bilinear star flocks of arbitrary cones 17. Robert Jajcay, On the geometry of cages 18.
    [Show full text]
  • The 48Th Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society
    298 The 48th annual meeting of the Australian Mathematical So- ciety The 48th annual meeting of the Australian and Mathematics at the University of Mel- Mathematical Society took place at RMIT bourne between 1935 and 1945. in Melbourne from September 28 till Octo- Of course, as with all good conferences, ber 1. With a record number of 50 students organisers and participants alike were held attending (34 of whom presented talks), and in suspense over whether some of the more close to 20 oversees participants taking part emminent guests would actually make their from a healthy total of 199 attendees, the appearance. Due to fog at Melbourne meeting organised by Kathy Horadam, An- Airport on the first day of the meeting, drew Eberhard, Asha Rao was a great suc- George Szekeres’ flight took a U turn back cess. As a first for the annual meeting, to Adelaide. George consequently missed the organising committee was assisted by a the opening session and the presentation of team of professional conference organisers. the Szekeres medal. Fortunately, improved A strong drawcard of the organisers was weather conditions in the afternoon allowed the exciting list of plenary speakers, includ- him to belatedly congratulate Bob Ander- ing the 2002 Fields medalist Vladimir Vo- son and to taste the special 2000 vintage evodsky and the mountaineer, entertainer GSM wine. Vladimir Voevodsky also lived and integer sequence guru Neil Sloane. The up to his reputation by not turning up for full list of plenary speakers was made up of his plenary lecture on the Wednesday morn- ing, his spot being filled by Ralph Stan- • Rosemary Bailey (QMC) – Association ton.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae Professor Jacqui Ramagge Faustms MAICD
    Curriculum Vitae Professor Jacqui Ramagge FAustMS MAICD Professor and Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney Contact Details : (+61 2) 9351 4533 H: 0407 065 911 k: [email protected] m: www.jacquiramagge.com Qualifications 1993 PhD Mathematics University of Warwick, UK 1990 MSc Mathematics University of Warwick, UK 1988 BA (First Class) Mathematics University of Warwick, UK Professional Development 2015 General Management Program Harvard Business School 2014 Foundations of Directorship Aust. Inst. of Company Directors 2008 Resolving conflict using emotional intelligence AVCC workshop Employment History 2015– Professor University of Sydney (USyd) 2007–2015 Academic (Levels D–E) University of Wollongong (UOW) 1993–2007 Academic (Levels A–C) University of Newcastle (UoN) Leadership Positions Held 2017 President Elect Australian Mathematical Society 2017– Chair Australian Council of Heads of Maths and Stats Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) 2017– Chief Editor Lecture Series, AustMS, Editor since 2011 2016– Head School of Mathematics and Statistics, USyd 2014 Chair Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship Selection Advisory Committee (SAC) 2009–2013 Head School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics (SMAS), UOW 2012 Dep. Chair ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Committee 2008-2009 Director AMSI Summer School, held at UOW 2006 Director Women@UoN Program, UoN 2005 Assist. Dean Marketing and Recruitment, Faculty of Science and IT, UoN 1995–2005 Chair Committee for the BH
    [Show full text]
  • After COVID-19: Creating the Best of Times from the Worst of Times
    After COVID-19: Creating the Best of Times from the Worst of Times Thursday 5th November, 2020 Government House, Sydney One hundred years after the 1918 Spanish flu claimed more than 50 million lives, pandemics remain on the list of major global risks. They are difficult to predict and invariably alter the course of history in ways we cannot foresee. The impact of this year’s COVID-19 pandemic spread quickly well beyond the people it infected, creating massive shifts across society and all sectors of the economy. The pandemic has exposed the social and economic vulnerabilities of today’s highly leveraged and interconnected world. It has also compounded prevailing existential risks for Australia, including the impact of climate change, a decade of household income stagnation, and an erosion of critically important political institutions that underpin national prosperity and our free, open, democratic society. The Royal Society of New South Wales will again join with the four Learned Academies of Australia to stage our annual Forum in Government House, Sydney, on 5th November under the gracious Vice Regal Patronage of Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC, Governor of New South Wales.The Forum will examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has become a wake-up call for all of us to drive a wide-ranging, national program that will create a more resilient, self-sufficient and prosperous Australia. Transformations achieved already during the pandemic include escalations of telemedicine, automation, and digital commerce and communications, to name but a few. These show us what is possible when the wrecking-ball of a virus exacts its human and economic toll.
    [Show full text]
  • CSIRO Annual Report 2004-05
    CSIRO Annual ReportAnnual 2004–05 Annual Report 2004–05 General Enquiries Tel: 1300 363 400 International: +61 3 9545 2176 Email : [email protected] Web: www.csiro.au www.csiro.au Letter of transmittal The Hon Dr Brendan Nelson MP Minister for Education, Science and Training Parliament House CANBERRA ACT 2600 We have pleasure in submitting to you, for presentation to Parliament, the fifty-seventh Annual Report of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. This report has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Science and Industry Research Act 1949 and in accordance with section 9 of the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act). CSIRO – the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – is one of the largest and most diverse scientific organisations in the world. It has 6 576 staff located across 57 sites Under section 9 of the CAC Act, CSIRO Board members are responsible for producing an throughout Australia and overseas. annual report in accordance with the rules laid down in Schedule 1 of this Act, including a ‘Report of Operations’ prepared in accordance with the Finance Minister’s Orders. CSIRO is an independent statutory authority constituted and operating under the provisions of the Science and Industry Research Act 1949 and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997. This report presents fairly the information required by the Minister for Finance and Administration as set out in the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies (Report of Operations) Orders 2005. Our purpose states: The report has been approved for presentation to you, signed this 24th day of August 2005 in By igniting the creative spirit of our people, we deliver great science and innovative solutions for accordance with a resolution of the Board members.
    [Show full text]
  • Regular Hypermaps Over Projective Linear Groups
    J. Aust. Math. Soc. 85 (2008), 155–175 doi:10.1017/S1446788708000827 REGULAR HYPERMAPS OVER PROJECTIVE LINEAR GROUPS MARSTON CONDER ˛, PRIMOZˇ POTOCNIKˇ and JOZEF SIRˇ A´ Nˇ (Received 23 December 2007; accepted 17 May 2008) Communicated by Peter M. Neumann Dedicated to Cheryl Praeger for her sixtieth birthday Abstract An enumeration result for orientably regular hypermaps of a given type with automorphism groups isomorphic to PSL.2; q/ or PGL.2; q/ can be extracted from a 1969 paper by Sah. We extend the investigation to orientable reflexible hypermaps and to nonorientable regular hypermaps, providing many more details about the associated computations and explicit generating sets for the associated groups. 2000 Mathematics subject classification: primary 57M15; secondary 05C25, 20F05. Keywords and phrases: hypermap, regular hypermap, triangle group, projective linear group. 1. Introduction A regular hypermap H is a pair .r; s/ of permutations generating a regular permutation group on a finite set, and provides a generalization of the geometric notion of a regular map on a surface, by allowing edges to be replaced by ‘hyperedges’. The cycles of r; s and rs correspond to the hypervertices, hyperedges and hyperfaces of H, which determine the embedding of the underlying (and connected) hypergraph into the surface, and their orders give the type of H, say fk; l; mg. The group G generated by r and s induces a group of automorphisms of this hypergraph, preserving the embedding, and acting transitively on the flags (incident hypervertex-hyperedge pairs) of H. When one of the parameters k; l; m is 2, the hypergraph is a graph, and the hypermap is a regular map.
    [Show full text]
  • WIMSIG Annual Report 2016
    Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group (WIMSIG) 2015/2016 Annual Report to the Australian Mathematical Society November 7, 2016 Contents 1 Executive Committee 3 2 Events 3 2.1 Women in Maths Gatherings . 3 2.2 Embedded events . 3 2.3 Endorsed events . 4 3 Advocacy 4 3.1 Written submissions . 4 3.2 Presentations . 5 3.3 Media Interviews . 6 4 WIMSIG Delegates 7 4.1 Connections with other organisations . 7 4.2 Newsletter . 8 4.3 Website . 8 5 Projects 9 5.1 Travel Awards . 9 5.2 WIMSIG Conference 2017: Celebration of Women in Mathe- matics . 10 5.3 Proposed online archive of Hanna Neumann's work . 11 6 Membership 11 7 Elections 11 8 Funds 12 9 ? Future funding source for Women in Maths Events at AustMS and ANZIAM annual meetings ? 12 1 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group 10 ? Good Practice Scheme ? 13 11 Appendix: Travel Award Reports, Rounds 1{4 14 2 7 November 2016 Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group This report includes activities from September 2015 to October 2016. 1 Executive Committee • Lesley Ward, Chair • Giang Nguyen, Treasurer • Joanne Hall, Secretary • Lynn Batten, Committee Member • Deborah Cromer, Committee Member • Asha Rao, Immediate Past Chair 2 Events WIMSIG currently supports three types of events: Women in Maths Gath- erings, Embedded Events, and Endorsed Events. 2.1 Women in Maths Gatherings WIMSIG organised nine Women in Maths Gatherings around the country in the last year. Funding was provided by the host organisations. • November 2015 Gatherings were hosted by UAdelaide, QUT, Monash and USyd. • June 2016 Gatherings were hosted by Flinders University, UTS, UQ, UCanberra and UTas.
    [Show full text]
  • Clay Lecture, Cheryl Praeger
    Codes and designs in Johnson graphs with high symmetry Cheryl E. Praeger Abstract The Johnson graph J(v; k) has, as vertices, all k-subsets of a v-set V, with two k-subsets adjacent if and only if they share k − 1 common elements of V. Subsets of vertices of J(v; k) can be interpreted as the blocks of an incidence structure, or as the codewords of a code, and automorphisms of J(v; k) leaving the subset invariant are then automorphisms of the corresponding incidence structure or code. This approach leads to interesting new designs and codes. For example, numerous actions of the Mathieu sporadic simple groups give rise to examples of Delandtsheer designs (which are both flag-transitive and anti-flag transitive), and codes with large minimum distance (and hence strong error-correcting properties). The paper surveys recent progress, explores links between designs and codes in Johnson graphs which have a high degree of symmetry, and discusses several open questions. Key-words: designs, codes in graphs, Johnson graph, 2-transitive permuta- tion group, neighbour-transitive, Delandtsheer design, flag-transitive, antiflag- transitive. Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 05C25, 20B25, 94B60. 1 Introduction The Johnson graphs are ubiquitous in mathematics, perhaps because of their many useful properties. They are distance transitive, and indeed geodesic-transitive, they underpin the Johnson association schemes { and `everyone's favourite graph', the Petersen Graph, occurs as the complement of one of them1. Also, the class of Johnson graphs played a key role in Babai's recent breakthrough [2] to a quasipoly- nomial bound on the complexity of graph isomorphism testing2.
    [Show full text]
  • Gazette 35(3)
    Cheryl Praeger∗ Gazette: What lead you to become a mathematician? Praeger: I discovered at high school that I really liked mathematics. Of course I was scared by the examinations, but I loved problem solving and I loved seeing the applications in physics to explain what was happening in the world. I really didn’t know that someone in the then 20th century could actually be a mathematician — I didn’t know that there were any jobs [for mathematicians]. So for me it was a matter of having the luxury and privilege of continuing to learn mathematics without any expectation that I would continue to do mathematics throughout my life. So I’ve been really lucky; it was something I really enjoyed doing, and it’s turned into a career. However, I needed enough confidence to do mathematics at university. Secretly, I thought that if ‘something happened’ in a statewide mathematics competition that I entered, I would then be determined and go for it. I tied for first-place in the Queensland Mathematics Teachers competition, in the year before I started university, and that gave me the confidence to decide that I would study maths. Gazette: So there was an issue of confidence at the beginning? Praeger: Oh definitely. I felt that I was a big fish in a small pond. I wondered whether the fact that I was performing well at school would have any bearing on whether I could continue to be successful doing mathematics at university. Gazette: What area of maths do you work in? Praeger: My research interests are in algebra, specifically group theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 47 Number 4 2020 the Australian Mathematical Society Gazette
    Volume 47 Number 4 2020 The Australian Mathematical Society Gazette David Yost and Sid Morris (Editors) Eileen Dallwitz (Production Editor) GazetteofAustMS,CIAO, E-mail: [email protected] Federation University Australia, PO Box 663, Web: www.austms.org.au/gazette Ballarat,VIC3353,Australia Tel:+61353279086 The individual subscription to the Society includes a subscription to the Gazette. Libraries may arrange subscriptions to the Gazette by writing to the Treasurer. The cost for one volume con- sisting of five issues is AUD 118.80 for Australian customers (includes GST), AUD 133.00 (or USD 141.00) for overseas customers (includes postage, no GST applies). The Gazette publishes items of the following types: • Reviews of books, particularly by Australian authors, or books of wide interest • Classroom notes on presenting mathematics in an elegant way • Items relevant to mathematics education • Letters on relevant topical issues • Information on conferences, particularly those held in Australasia and the region • Information on recent major mathematical achievements • Reports on the business and activities of the Society • Staff changes and visitors in mathematics departments • News of members of the Australian Mathematical Society Local correspondents submit news items and act as local Society representatives. Material for publication and editorial correspondence should be submitted to the editors. Any communications with the editors that are not intended for publication must be clearly identified as such. Notes for contributors Please send contributions to [email protected]. Submissions should be fairly short, easy to read and of interest to a wide range of readers. Please typeset technical articles using LATEX or variants. In exceptional cases other editable elec- tronic formats such as plain text or Word may be accepted.
    [Show full text]