Perth Professor Cheryl Praeger becomes Companion of the Order of Australia thanks to her passion for maths

Fifty years after Cheryl Praeger started her PhD at Oxford University, her passion for mathematics is as strong as ever. Half a century of her hard work has led to mathematical breakthroughs and research discoveries that have left a lasting mark on our understanding of the world we live in and driven progress. At the age of just 35 and with two young children, Professor Praeger became a professor of mathematics — the second, and youngest, woman in Australian history to do so. This stellar career has led to her becoming a Companion of the Order of Australia — the highest award in today’s Australia Day Honours. The University of WA academic said she was “stunned” and delighted by the accolade. “It’s a mixture of being excited and feeling really honoured, humbled and so very, very pleased to be acknowledging the importance of mathematics and science and women in all these fields. It’s just a wonderful feeling,” she said. Professor Praeger said the professorial appointment in 1983 was a turning point in her career. “I was so young and it meant expanding my horizons hugely,” she said. “I was invited on to government committees and I started to learn lots and lots about education, and not just mathematics research and mathematics teaching, that I had been upskilling for the previous 10 years or so.” Professor Praeger said the concept of symmetry had engaged her whole career. “Many, many things in life are pretty symmetrical ... and it’s that symmetry which helps them to replicate so quickly because they they just need a small amount of environmental or genetic knowledge plus their symmetry to allow them to replicate,” she said. Awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2019, she recalled her passion for maths blossomed when she was in Year Two in country Queensland. “All of a sudden we were allowed to have negative numbers,” she said. “It simply had not made sense to me that you couldn’t subtract five from three because it is instinctive that minus two should mean something. “In Year Two you were allowed to have negative numbers and the world started to make more sense to me.” By the end of high school, she just wanted to learn more mathematics. “I didn't know where it would lead but I wanted the opportunity to study more about mathematics,” she said. “I didn’t know that they were any live mathematicians. I thought they were all dead.” Professor Praeger said a guidance officer told her the only job she could do with mathematics was as an actuary but there were two in Queensland already and no more were needed. Thankfully, it did not deter her. She studied maths, science and physics at the University of Queensland, then won a scholarship at the Australian National University in Canberra. After deciding to do a PhD, Professor Praeger was awarded a Commonwealth scholarship to Oxford University. Retirement has not dampened her enthusiasm, which she still imparts to UWA students in lectures. “I love solving difficult problems,” she said. “There’s such an adrenaline rush. It just feel so exhilarating to solve something that you've been trying to solve for maybe a year or something. And then it will just work. “There’s the hard slog in-between but there are so many experiences of just seeing the structure and seeing it work. There's nothing like it.” Professor Praeger, who is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, said her husband — maths statistician John Henstridge — had been supportive of her work. ** (If viewing the below table on mobile, turn phone to view in landscape mode) **