Cheryl Praeger's honorary D.Sc. from St Andrews


On 30 November 2015, Cheryl Praeger was awarded an honorary D.Sc. by the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Below we give (i) the laureation address given by Colva Roney-Dougal and (ii) Cheryl Praeger's reply:

(i) Laureation Address.

Professor Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science
Laureation by Dr Colva Roney-Dougal
School of Mathematics and Statistics
Monday 30 November 2015

Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present Professor Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger for the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.

Cheryl was born in Toowoomba, a regional town in south-east Queensland, Australia. Her interest in the sciences began at high school, but she was told 'You don't want to do mathematics. Girls don't pass'. Fortunately, Cheryl decided to ignore this advice, and during her undergraduate degree at the University of Queensland, she initially studied mathematics, physics and chemistry, before later focusing on mathematics.

A key early event was a summer vacation studentship at the Australian National University in Canberra, working with the eminent mathematician Professor Bernhard Neumann. It was then that she first got to experience the excitement of tackling an unsolved problem, and (despite being an undergraduate) wrote the very first of her now more than 350 research papers. The following year, Cheryl won a Commonwealth Scholarship to St Anne's College, Oxford. Her doctoral adviser was Dr Peter Neumann, the eldest son of Bernhard Neumann.

By 1976, Cheryl had an appointment at the University of Western Australia, where she has been ever since, and at the age of 35 she became only the second ever female full professor of mathematics at an Australian university - at the risk of sounding repetitive, the first was Hanna Neumann, the wife of Bernhard and mother of Peter!

Cheryl has worked in many areas of mathematics, but the one to which she has contributed the most is the study of permutation groups and group actions. Indeed, her invited lecture at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians, the most prestigious conference in mathematics, was on the topic of permutation groups. The study of permutation groups dates back to the work of Galois in the 1830s on permutations of the roots of polynomials, so this area has a long and illustrious history. Cheryl has worked both on group actions in their own right, and as a tool for studying other structures, and her theory of finite quasiprimitive permutation groups opened up new directions in the study of highly symmetric graphs.

Upon her appointment to a professorship, Cheryl made a conscious decision to start working in the mathematics of computation, as she felt a responsibility to introduce computers into the teaching of mathematics, and knew that she would only have a serious interest in this if she also became an active researcher in the field. Her foundational 1992 paper with Peter Neumann presented an algorithm to test whether a matrix group over a finite field, given by a set of generating matrices, contains the special linear group. This paper is often credited with the birth of the Matrix Group Recognition Project, on which scores of researchers across the world have worked, and which is only now approaching completion.

The list of honours awarded to Cheryl would take substantially longer than my allotted slot just to read out, so I shall single out a few. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Science in 1996, and is now its Foreign Secretary. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1999. She was the first female president of the Australian Mathematical Society, and she is now a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, an Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society, and an Honorary Life Member of the Australian Mathematical Society.

Cheryl has published with over 150 co-authors, despite facing initial pressure from senior figures, who felt that mathematics should be a solitary occupation. From the outset, she deliberately built up a strong group of interacting mathematicians at the University of Western Australia, which continues to flourish. This also was not at all the way in which mathematicians normally worked at the time. The research culture in mathematics has changed during Cheryl's career, to my mind greatly for the better, and those of my generation are immensely grateful for her clear demonstration that there is more than one way to achieve research excellence.

Cheryl has a very internationalist mindset, and has deliberately cultivated mathematical contacts in the Philippines, Thailand, China and Iran, amongst many other countries. She believes strongly in helping less wealthy countries to upgrade their level of mathematical knowledge, and in particular continues to offer intellectual and practical support to their many female mathematicians. She was elected, in 2006, to the executive committee of the International Mathematical Union, and went on to become the Vice-President of the International Commission for Mathematical Instruction.

Cheryl's intellect, energy, enthusiasm and integrity are an inspiration to us all.

Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of her major contribution to mathematics, I invite you to confer on Professor Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.

(ii) Cheryl Praeger's reply.

Graduation Ceremony, St Andrews, November 30, 2015.

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor,

Colleagues from St Andrews, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I would first like to congratulate my fellow graduands.

I am delighted to receive an honorary doctorate of the University of St Andrews, and I feel very humbled by this honour.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the University of St Andrews for this recognition, not only of me, but also for recognising the importance of my subject Mathematics.

My links with mathematicians and computer scientists from St Andrews go back several decades. And indeed St Andrews is very well known among the mathematical community, especially, but not only, by those mathematicians in my sub-discipline, Group Theory.

The most important major international Group Theory conferences are the Groups St Andrews meetings held every four years, beginning in St Andrews in 1981. I have attended and spoken at several Groups St Andrews meetings and have encouraged my postdoctoral colleagues and students to attend.

St Andrews is also one of four centres which are jointly coordinating the further development and maintenance of the international group theory computer system GAP (meaning - Groups Algorithms Programming). It is an invaluable resource, contributed to, and used by, thousands of mathematicians and students all over the world, in their research and teaching, related to groups and other algebraic and combinatorial structures.

Thirdly I mention the MacTutor History of Mathematics web site, with approaching 3000 biographies of mathematical scientists. It was initiated by Edmund Robertson and John O'Connor and acknowledged this year by award of the inaugural Hirst Prize of the London Mathematical Society. After Wikipedia, it rates very highly indeed if one makes a Google search for the history of mathematics. It is an outstanding resource for teachers, students and the general public - as well as the mathematical community!

I repeat - my sincere thanks to the University of St Andrews for this honour, and to my mathematical colleagues at St Andrews for their friendship over many years.

Last Updated February 2016