Countless firsts for Australian mathematicians

One is the only number that counts for Australian mathematicians at the top international conference for their discipline, which has just finished in Rio de Janeiro.

University of Sydney mathematician Geordie Williamson

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: Maths firsts, that’s not a scholarship

Counting up the wins

In yet another first, University of Sydney mathematician Geordie Williamson has become the first Australian-based mathematician to deliver an address to the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), the-once-every-four-years event which has just finished in Rio de Janeiro.

Professor Williamson’s address — it was “crowd pleasing” according to the ICM — explored how geometric techniques could be used to solve seemingly algebraic problems. He discussed using a concept called “semi-simplicity” in representation theory, which is the study of symmetric solutions to linear equations.

“Semi-simplicity is a little like the air we breathe in representation theory. In initial situations, it’s everywhere, but when you go further and further out, you lose semi-simplicity,” said Professor Williamson.

His address followed a couple of other notable wins for Australia at the congress. Australian Akshay Venkatesh was awarded maths’ highest honour, the Fields Medal, and the University of Sydney’s Nalini Joshi was elected vice-president of the International Mathematical Union, the first ever Aussie to rise that high.

If you’re an Australian mathematician, why would you need to count beyond one?

What’s a scholarship?

Eyebrows are raising at news of the widely available “scholarships” which some universities in Western Australia are offering to international students in order to attract them to study in the state.

Murdoch and Edith Cowan universities are offering a 20 per cent fee reduction to virtually all prospective international students, and even the state’s Group of Eight institution, the University of Western Australia, is offering fee reductions to a very broad range of “high achieving” international students. But they don’t call them discounts, they call them scholarships.

All of this threatens to debase the value of the name “scholarship” says private higher education provider, the International College of Management Sydney. Ann Whitelock Courtney-O’Connor who chairs the ICMS Professional Scholarship Fund and its Aspiring Education Fund, says her institution has “fair dinkum scholarships”, meaning that the applicants have to submit their academic results, certificates and an essay on career goals, values and the reasons they want to study at IMCS. Finalists are interviewed by senior level executives in the institution and asked a wide variety of questions.

“Last year the scholarship program at ICMS awarded in excess of $1 million in scholarships to over 65 students in a student intake of approximately 800,” says Ms Courtney-O’Connor.

That’s what you call a scholarship.