Person

Szekeres, George (1911 - 2005)

AM FAA

Born
29 May 1911
Budapest, Hungary
Died
28 August 2005
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Occupation
Mathematician

Summary

George Szekeres was Professor of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales from 1963 until his retirement in 1976. He was heavily involved in setting problems for the high schools mathematics competition run by the University of New South Wales and for the yearly problem competitions for undergraduate students organised by the Sydney University Mathematics Society. His research was in the area of number theory, combinatorics and analysis.

Skip to

Details

After completing a Diploma in Chemical Engineering at the Technological University in Budapest, George Szekeres worked in a leather factory in Hungary for several years. He and his wife Esther then fled to China in 1939 to escape the rising anti-Semitism in Europe. He soon took up a job working as a leather chemist and then in an American air force base as a clerk.

In 1948 the University of Adelaide offered Szekeres a post as Lecturer in Mathematics. That was the start of his career in academia in Australia which lasted just under thirty years. He remained at the University of Adelaide until 1963, when he took up a Professorship in Pure Mathematics at the University of New South Wales. He retired from all academic duties in 1976 and the following year, the university bestowed him with an Honorary Doctor of Science.

George Szekeres was a highly regarded and awarded scientist: The Australian Mathematical Society created the George Szekeres Medal in his honour in 2001 and in 2002 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Chronology

1933 - 1939
Career position - Industrial employment in Hungary
1939 - 1948
Career position - Industrial employment in Shanghai, China
1948 - 1963
Career position - Lecturer then Senior Lecturer then Reader in Mathematics, University of Adelaide
1956 - 2005
Career position - Founding Member, Australian Mathematical Society
1961 - 1963
Career position - Member of Council, Australian Mathematical Society
1963 -
Award - Fellow, Australian Academy of Science (FAA)
1963 - 1976
Career position - Professor of Mathematics, University of New South Wales
1968
Award - Lyle Medal, Australian Academy of Science
1971 - 1975
Career position - Member of Council, Australian Mathematical Society
1972 - 1974
Career position - President, Australian Mathematical Society
1976
Life event - Retired
1977
Award - Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc), University of New South Wales
1993
Award - B. H. Neumann Award for Excellence in Mathematics Enrichment (jointly), Australian Mathematics Trust
2001
Award - George Szekeres Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society created in his honour
2001
Award - Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and science in pure mathematics
2002
Award - Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to mathematics and science, particularly as a contributor to education and research, to the support and development of the University of New South Wales Mathematics Competition and the Australian Mathematical Olympiad Team

Related Awards

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Journal Articles

  • 'Obituaries', Australian Academy of Science Newsletter, 63 (August-November) (2005), 10-11. Details
  • Cowling, M. G.; Hunt, D. C.; and Steele, J. D., 'George Szekeres 1911 - 2005', Historical Records of Australian Science, 30 (1) (2019), 49-57. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR18012. Details
  • Cowling, Michael, 'George Szekeres FAA AO 29.5.1911 - 28/8/2005: Esther Szekeres-Klein 20/2/1910 - 28/8/2005', Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society, 32 (4) (2005), 221-4. Details
  • Giles, J. R.; and Wallis, Jennifer Seberry, 'George Szekeres', Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society Series A, 21 (1976), 385-92. Details

Resources

Resource Sections

See also

Rosanne Walker & Annette Alafaci

Created: 25 May 2001, Last modified: 15 June 2022

EOAS ID: biogs/P003600b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P003600b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260