Hendrika Cornelia Scott (Henda) Swart

FRSSAf The Royal Society of South Africa is a learned society composed of eminent South African scientists and academics. The society was granted its royal charter by King Edward VII in 1908, nearly a century after Capetonians first began to conceive of ...

(born 1939, died February 2016 ge 77-78 was a South African mathematician, a professor emeritus of mathematics at the

University of KwaZulu-Natal The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is a university with five campuses in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2004 after the merger between the University of Natal and the University of Durban-Westville. ...

and a professor at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

Fellow citation
,

Royal Society of South Africa The Royal Society of South Africa is a learned society composed of eminent South African scientists and academics. The society was granted its royal charter by King Edward VII in 1908, nearly a century after Capetonians first began to conceive of ...

, 1996, retrieved 2015-01-17..

Personal life

Born Hendrika Cornelia Scott she married John Henry Swart. They had three children Christine, Sandra and Gustav.

Career

Swart began teaching at the University of Natal in 1962. She was the first person to earn a doctorate in mathematics from

Stellenbosch University Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...

, in 1971, with a dissertation on the geometry of

projective plane In mathematics, a projective plane is a geometric structure that extends the concept of a plane. In the ordinary Euclidean plane, two lines typically intersect in a single point, but there are some pairs of lines (namely, parallel lines) that do ...

s supervised by Kurt-Rüdiger Kannenberg. In 1977, her research interests shifted from geometry to

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

, which she continued to publish in for the rest of her career. She was the editor-in-chief of the journal ''Utilitas Mathematica'', and was vice president of the

Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (ICA) is an international scientific organization formed in 1990 to increase the visibility and influence of the combinatorial community. In pursuit of this goal, the ICA sponsors conferences, ...

. In 1996 she became a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

. Swart was a part-time lecturer at the University of Cape town from 2014 until her death.

Publications

She published under the name Henda C Swart. She published nearly 100 papers from 1980 to 2018.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Swart, Hendrika Cornelia Scott 1939 births 2016 deaths 20th-century South African mathematicians South African mathematicians Graph theorists Stellenbosch University alumni University of KwaZulu-Natal 21st-century South African mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians Academic journal editors