Fitzpatrick, Simon Peter (1953 - 2004)

Summary

Simon Fitzpatrick was a mathematician whose research interests included monotone operators on Banach spaces; geometry of Banach spaces; differentiability of functions on Banach spaces; and probability theory. For ten years he lectured at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, having a productive collaboration with fellow mathematician Bruce Calvert; they published 11 papers during this period. Equally fruitful were contacts he maintained with John Giles at the University of Newcastle, and Jonathan Borwein in Canada. Fitzpatrick moved to the University of Western Australia in 1991, teaching undergraduate courses and reviewing second year curriculum in mathematics and statistics. Such was his concern for the standards of teaching that he accepted the role of Chief Examiner for the tertiary entrance calculus examination for 1994 - 1996. Fitzpatrick was a chess champion, having been the Western Australian Junior Chess state champion from age 12 to 17. In later years, as his health deteriorated, he was an enthusiastic player of correspondence chess, being named International Correspondence Master in 1999 by the International Correspondence Chess Federation.

Details

Chronology

1974

Education - BSc (hons), University of Western Australia

1980

Education - PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

March 1980 - August 1980

Career position - Visiting Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Mathematics and Statistics, Melbourne

August 1980 - 1982

Career position - Visiting Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois, Champaigne-Illinois, U.S.A.

1982 - 1988

Career position - Lecturer in mathematics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

1986 - 1987

Career position - Assistant Editor and Problems Editor, Mathematical chronicle

1988 - 1991

Career position - Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, New Zealand

1991 - 2004

Career position - Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Western Australia

1999

Award - International Correspondence Master, the International Correspondence Chess Federation

2000

Career position - Captain of the Australian correspondence team, CC Olympiad XIV preliminaries

Related entries

Published resources

Journal Articles

• Borwein, Jonathan M., 'Simon Fitzpatrick memorial volume', Journal of convex analysis, 13 (3) (2006), 463-76, https://www.heldermann.de/JCA/JCA13/JCA133/jca13040.htm. Details
• Borwein, Jonathan M. and Fitzpatrick, Simon, 'Existence of nearest points in Banach spaces', Canadian journal of mathematics, 41 (4) (1989), 702-20, https://doi.org/10.4153/CJM-1989-032-7. Details
• Borwein, Jonathan M., Fitzpatrick, Simon P. and Giles, John R., 'The differentiability of real functions on normed linear space using generalized subgradients', Journal mathematical analysis and applications, 128 (2) (1987), 512-34. Details
• Calvert, Bruce, 'Tribute for Simon Fitzpatrick', Newsletter of the New Zealand Mathematical Society, 92 (2004), 22-3. Details
• Fitzpatrick, Simon and Calvert, Bruce, 'Convex bodies in $R\sp 3$ invariant under projections', Mathematical chronicle, 20 (1991), 89-108. Details
• Fitzpatrick, Simon P. and Simons, S., 'The conjugates, compositions and marginals of convex functions', Journal of convex analysis, 8 (2) (2001), 423-46, https://www.heldermann.de/JCA/JCA08/JCA082/jca08023.htm. Details
• Praeger, Cheryl, 'Simon Fitzpatrick 29 July 1953 - 21 August 2004', Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society, 31 (5) (2004), 309-10, https://austms.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Nov04-311.pdf. Details

Theses

• Fitzpatrick, Simon, 'The differentiability of distance functions and the GSP in Banach spaces', PhD thesis, University of Seattle, 1980. Details