Esther Szekeres
Esther Szekeres | |
---|---|
Born | Esther Klein February 20, 1910 Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Adelaide, Australia |
Nationality | Hungarian–Australian |
Occupation | Mathematician |
Employer | Macquarie University |
Known for | Happy ending problem |
Spouse(s) | George Szekeres |
Children | 2 |
Esther Szekeres (Hungarian: Klein Eszter; 20 February 1910 – 28 August 2005) was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician.
Biography
Esther Klein was born to Ignaz Klein in a Jewish family in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary in 1910. As a young woman in Budapest, Klein was a member of a group of Hungarians including Paul Erdős, George Szekeres and Pál Turán that convened over interesting mathematical problems.[1]
In 1933, Klein proposed to the group a combinatorial problem that Erdős named as the Happy Ending problem as it led to her marriage to George Szekeres in 1937, with whom she had two children.[2]
Following the outbreak of World War II, Esther and George Szekeres emigrated to Australia after spending several years in Hongkew, a community of refugees located in Shanghai, China.[3] In Australia, they originally settled in Adelaide before moving to Sydney in the 1960s.
In Sydney, Esther lectured at Macquarie University and was actively involved in mathematics enrichment for high-school students. In 1984, she jointly founded a weekly mathematics enrichment meeting that has since expanded into a programme of about 30 groups that continue to meet weekly and inspire high school students throughout Australia and New Zealand.[4]
In 2004, she and George moved back to Adelaide, where, on 28 August 2005, she and her husband died within an hour of each other.[1][2]
References
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- Articles containing Hungarian-language text
- 1910 births
- 2005 deaths
- 20th-century mathematicians
- Australian mathematicians
- Australian Jews
- Hungarian Jews
- Hungarian mathematicians
- Macquarie University faculty
- People from Budapest
- People from Sydney
- Women mathematicians
- 20th-century women scientists