Published Resources Details
Book
- Title
- Counting Australia in: the, people, organisations and institutions of Australian mathematics
- Imprint
- Halsted Press with the Australian Mathematical Society, Broadway Bay, N.S.W., 2006, 431 pp
- ISBN/ISSN
- 1920831398
- Url
- https://austms.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CAI_booklet.pdf
- Abstract
In October 1999, in a note in the Australian Mathematical Society Gazette, the secretary at the time, David Elliott, drew attention to the 50th anniversary of the Society to occur in 2006 and asked for someone to write its history. My offer more than a year later to David and Alan Carey, then the president, was much more ambitious-the history of mathematics in Australia.
This book is the culmination of what became the Australian Mathematical Society History Project. Other aspects of the project have been the taping of interviews with foundation members of the Society and other prominent mathematicians, and the gathering of photographs and other images relevant to the history. Twenty-four interviews were conducted and all have been fully logged; more than 200 images were collected, of which more than 80 are included in the book. All notes connected with the book, including emailed messages and letters referenced in the book as "private communications", all tapes and all images will be catalogued and stored with the Society's archives, held by the Basser Library in the Australian Academy of Science, Canberra.
Counting Australia In is a comprehensive account, in ten chapters and three appendices, of mathematics in Australia up to the present day. In particular, Chapter 10 is the requested history of the Society itself. Quite purposely, despite my original offer, the title of the book does not refer to a history. That would suggest the development of mathematics as an academic study in Australia, with all its sub-disciplines, and that is a task beyond any individual. The subtitle of the book says it all: it is about the people, organisations and institutions of Australian mathematics.
Related entries
Corporate Bodies
Journals
Related Published resources
isRelated
- Cohen, Graeme [editor]; Moore, Ross [technical advisor], Developments in the history of mathematics in Australia, Updated regularly, Australian Mathematical Society, Australia, 2025. https://austms.org.au/resources/history-mathematics-in-australia/. Details
- Cohen, Graeme L., 'A bibliography of Australian mathematics to 1960 with observations relating to the history of Australian mathematics', Historical Records of Australian Science, 31 (1) (2020), 17-25. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR19008. Details