There is maths in everything, says visiting professor

Don’t ever be afraid of mathematics, says mathematician Julie Rowlett, who is lecturing this week to Australia’s up-and-coming top talent

US mathematician Julie Rowlett says there is maths in everything.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: message for mathematicians, new ECU chancellor

Don’t be afraid

US mathematician Julie Rowlett is the star attraction at the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute winter school, which is on this month at the distinctly warm climate of the University of Queensland’s Brisbane campus.

Professor Rowlett — whose interests also encompass languages, the Korean martial art of Tang Soo Do, scuba diving, making and listening to music, dancing and cooking — is giving five lectures at the school to post graduate students and early career researchers from around Australia.

Her message? “Don’t ever be afraid of mathematics! Even the “mathematics professionals’’ get stuck, make silly mistakes, and need to ask for explanations of things we have trouble understanding. There is mathematics in basically everything, even if we don’t understand it all yet.”

For her the “everything” includes cooking (how and why does a square pan cook differently to a round pan?) and plankton (can we describe mathematically how they swim and compete for food?)”

Professor Rowlett, who has an appointment at Sweden’s Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, is giving a public lecture this evening (July 9) at 6.30pm at the Abel Smith lecture theatre on the University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus.

Sanderson appointed chancellor

Former Western Australian governor Kerry Sanderson will become chancellor of Edith Cowan University, starting from January 1 next year. She takes over from Hendy Cowan, WA’s deputy premier from 1993 to 2001, who has been ECU chancellor for the past 14 years.

Ms Sanderson, a former senior state bureaucrat who ran the government-owned enterprise Fremantle Ports from 1991 to 2008, was WA governor from 2014 until earlier this year when she handed over to former federal Labor leader Kim Beazley.

Mr Sanderson said she was looking forward to the role and praised ECU for its work in cybersecurity, its renowned WA Academy for the Performing Arts, and for its achievement in being Australia’s top public university in student experience in the Quality Indicators in Learning and Teaching (QILT), the official federal government survey.