George Szekeres AM

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

(; 29 May 1911 – 28 August 2005) was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician.

Early years

Szekeres was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, as Szekeres György and received his degree in

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

at the

Technical University of Budapest Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

. He worked six years in Budapest as an

analytical chemist Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods to separate, identify, and quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute the entire analysis or be combined with another method. Separati ...

. He married

Esther Klein Esther Szekeres ( hu, Klein Eszter; 20 February 191028 August 2005) was a Hungarian– Australian mathematician. Biography Esther Klein was born to Ignaz Klein in a Jewish family in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary in 1910. As a young physics stude ...

in 1937.Obituary
The Sydney Morning Herald Being

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, the family had to escape from the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

persecution so Szekeres took a job in Shanghai, China. There they lived through World War II, the Japanese occupation and the beginnings of the Communist revolution. Their son, Peter, was born in Shanghai.

Career

In 1948, he was offered a position at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...

, Australia, that he gladly accepted. After all the troubles he had, he began flourishing as a mathematician. A few years later, his daughter Judy was born. In 1963, the family moved to Sydney, where Szekeres took a position at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...

, and taught there until his retirement in 1975. He also devised problems for secondary school

mathematical olympiad Mathematics competitions or mathematical olympiads are competitive events where participants complete a mathematics, math test. These tests may require multiple choice or numeric answers, or a detailed written solution or proof. International math ...

s run by the university where he taught, and for a yearly undergraduate competition run by the

Sydney University The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's six ...

Mathematics Society. Szekeres worked closely with many prominent mathematicians throughout his life, including

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...

Esther Szekeres Esther Szekeres ( hu, Klein Eszter; 20 February 191028 August 2005) was a Hungarian people, Hungarian–Australians, Australian mathematician. Biography Esther Klein was born to Ignaz Klein in a Jewish family in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary in 1 ...

(née Esther Klein),

Pál Turán Pál Turán (; 18 August 1910 – 26 September 1976) also known as Paul Turán, was a Hungarian mathematician who worked primarily in extremal combinatorics. He had a long collaboration with fellow Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, lasting ...

Béla Bollobás Béla Bollobás FRS (born 3 August 1943) is a Hungarian-born British mathematician who has worked in various areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and percolation. He was strongly influenced by Paul E ...

Ronald Graham Ronald Lewis Graham (October 31, 1935July 6, 2020) was an American mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as "one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years". He ...

Alf van der Poorten Alfred Jacobus (Alf) van der Poorten (16 May 1942 – 9 October 2010) was a Dutch-Australian number theorist, for many years on the mathematics faculties of the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University.... Biography Van der Poor ...

Miklós Laczkovich Miklós Laczkovich (born 21 February 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician mainly noted for his work on real analysis and geometric measure theory. His most famous result is the solution of Tarski's circle-squaring problem in 1989.Ruthen, R. (1989 ...

, and John Coates.

Honours

* In 1968 he was the winner of the

Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal The Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal is awarded at most every two years by the Australian Academy of Science to a mathematician or physicist for his or her outstanding research accomplishments.

of the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soci ...

. * In May 2001, a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

was held in honour of his ninetieth birthday at the

. * In January 2001 he was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal "for service to Australian society and science in pure mathematics". * In 2001, the

Australian Mathematical Society The Australian Mathematical Society (AustMS) was founded in 1956 and is the national society of the mathematics profession in Australia. One of the Society's listed purposes is to promote the cause of mathematics in the community by representing t ...

created the

George Szekeres Medal The George Szekeres Medal is awarded by the Australian Mathematical Society for outstanding research contributions over a fifteen-year period. This award, established in 2001, was given biennially in even-numbered years until 2021 and has since bee ...

in his honour. * In June 2002, he was made a

Member of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

(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.'

Personal life

The so-called

Happy Ending problem In mathematics, the "happy ending problem" (so named by Paul Erdős because it led to the marriage of George Szekeres and Esther Klein) is the following statement: This was one of the original results that led to the development of Ramsey t ...

is an example of how mathematics pervaded George's life. During 1933, George and several other students met frequently in Budapest to discuss mathematics. At one of these meetings,

proposed the following problem: :''Given five points in the plane in

general position In algebraic geometry and computational geometry, general position is a notion of genericity for a set of points, or other geometric objects. It means the ''general case'' situation, as opposed to some more special or coincidental cases that ar ...

, prove that four of them form a

convex Convex or convexity may refer to: Science and technology * Convex lens, in optics Mathematics * Convex set, containing the whole line segment that joins points ** Convex polygon, a polygon which encloses a convex set of points ** Convex polytope ...

quadrilateral In geometry a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, having four edges (sides) and four corners (vertices). The word is derived from the Latin words ''quadri'', a variant of four, and ''latus'', meaning "side". It is also called a tetragon, ...

.'' After allowing George,

, and the other students to scratch their heads for some time, Esther explained her proof. Subsequently, George and Paul wrote a paper (1935) that generalises this result; it is regarded as one of the foundational works in the field of

combinatorial geometry Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geo ...

. Erdős dubbed the original problem the "Happy Ending" problem because it resulted in George and Esther's marriage in 1937. George and Esther died within an hour of each other on 28 August 2005 in

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

, South Australia.

Notes

References

* Giles, J. R., Wallis, J. S., "George Szekeres. With affection and respect", ''Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society, Series A'', Vol 21 (1976), No 4, pp. 385–392. * Cowling, M., "Obituary George and Esther Szekeres", ''Gazette of the Australian Mathematical Society'', Vol 32 (2005), No 4, pp. 221–224. *

External links

MacTutor BiographyThe work of George Szekeres on functional equations Keith Briggs
{{DEFAULTSORT:Szekeres, George 1911 births 2005 deaths Australian Jews Australian chemists Australian mathematicians Budapest University of Technology and Economics alumni Combinatorialists Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science Hungarian Jews 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians 21st-century Hungarian mathematicians Members of the Order of Australia University of New South Wales faculty Hungarian chemists Austro-Hungarian mathematicians Hungarian emigrants to Australia