Peter Jephson Cameron

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(born 23 January 1947) is an Australian mathematician who works in

group theory In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as group (mathematics), groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as ring (mathematics), rings, field ( ...

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and computer data storage, data sto ...

, and

model theory In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between theory (mathematical logic), formal theories (a collection of Sentence (mathematical logic), sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a Structure (mat ...

. He is currently

Emeritus Professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

at the

University of St Andrews The University of St Andrews (, ; abbreviated as St And in post-nominals) is a public university in St Andrews, Scotland. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, f ...

and

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University ...

Education

Cameron received a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

from the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

and a D.Phil. in 1971 from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

as a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Esta ...

, with

Peter M. Neumann Peter Michael Neumann OBE (28 December 1940 – 18 December 2020) was a British mathematician. His fields of interest included the history of mathematics and Galois theory. Biography Born in December 1940, Neumann was a son of the German-bo ...

as his supervisor. Subsequently, he was a Junior Research Fellow and later a Tutorial Fellow at

Merton College Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, chancellor ...

, Oxford, and also lecturer at Bedford College, London.

Work

Cameron specialises in

algebra Algebra is a branch of mathematics that deals with abstract systems, known as algebraic structures, and the manipulation of expressions within those systems. It is a generalization of arithmetic that introduces variables and algebraic ope ...

and combinatorics; he has written books about combinatorics, algebra,

permutation groups In mathematics, a permutation group is a group ''G'' whose elements are permutations of a given set ''M'' and whose group operation is the composition of permutations in ''G'' (which are thought of as bijective functions from the set ''M'' to its ...

, and logic, and has produced over 350 academic papers. In 1988, he posed the

Cameron–Erdős conjecture In combinatorics, the Cameron–Erdős conjecture (now a theorem) is the statement that the number of sum-free sets contained in = \ is O\big(\big). The sum of two odd numbers is even, so a set of odd numbers is always sum-free. There are \lce ...

with

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 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 discrete mathematics, g ...

Honours and awards

He was awarded the

London Mathematical Society The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's Learned society, learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh ...

Whitehead Prize The Whitehead Prize is awarded yearly by the London Mathematical Society to multiple mathematicians working in the United Kingdom who are at an early stage of their career. The prize is named in memory of homotopy theory pioneer J. H. C. Whitehe ...

in 1979 and

Senior Whitehead Prize The Senior Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society (LMS) is now awarded in odd numbered years in memory of John Henry Constantine Whitehead, president of the LMS between 1953 and 1955. The Prize is awarded to mathematicians normally r ...

in 2017, and is joint winner of the 2003 Euler Medal. In 2008, he was selected as the Forder Lecturer of the LMS and

New Zealand Mathematical Society The New Zealand Mathematical Society is a New Zealand based learned society of mathematicians. It is listed by the Royal Society of New Zealand as the affiliate organisation responsible for mathematics research, and by the International Mathematic ...

. In 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

Books

* * * * * * * *

Notes

References

Short biography

External links

Home page
at Queen Mary University of London
Home page
at University of St Andrews
Peter Cameron's 60th birthday conferencePeter Cameron's blog
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cameron, Peter Academics of Queen Mary University of London Academics of the University of St Andrews 1947 births Living people Australian Rhodes Scholars Algebraists Coding theorists Combinatorialists Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford University of Queensland alumni Whitehead Prize winners Model theorists 20th-century Australian mathematicians 21st-century Australian mathematicians Group theorists