Márta Svéd

The native form of this personal name is Svéd Márta. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Márta Svéd
Born
Márta Wachsberger

(1910-11-16)16 November 1910
Hungary
Died30 September 2005(2005-09-30) (aged 94–95)
South Australia
Alma materUniversity of Adelaide
Known for
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisOn finite linear and Baer structures (1985)

Márta Svéd (née Wachsberger; 16 November 1910 – 30 September 2005) was a Hungarian mathematician who was a teacher of mathematics at the University of Adelaide after moving to Australia in the 1930s. She was 75 years old when she completed her PhD in 1985. She wrote the textbook Journey into Geometries (1991), and won the BH Neumann Award in 1994 for her contributions to mathematics learning in Australia.

Early life and education

Márta Wachsberger was born in Hungary on 16 November 1910.[1]

She was in the same high school class in Budapest as Esther Klein.[2][3] She became interested in mathematics through Középiskolai Matematikai Lapok (KöMaL), a Hungarian magazine for high school mathematicians, and through its problem-solving column, where Paul Erdős was also a regular solver.[3][4]

She took third place in her year's offering of the Hungarian national high school mathematics competition, ahead of Pál Turán but behind her future husband, civil engineer George Svéd.[3][5] Due to the restrictions placed on Jews in Hungary in the late 1920s, only two students from their class could study science or mathematics at the university in Budapest; Márta took the mathematics position, and Klein studied physics instead.[2]

Both Márta and George Svéd attended the Royal Joseph University in Budapest.[1][5]

Career

Svéd and her husband moved to Australia in 1939 and had one son and one daughter. She became the head of the mathematics department at Wilderness School, a private Adelaide high school for girls, and in the same year helped found Australia's first high school mathematics magazine.[3]

Her old friend Klein, meanwhile, had married mathematician George Szekeres and escaped Europe for Shanghai; after World War II, the Szekeres and Svéd families shared a small apartment in Adelaide.[2]

Awards and honours

Svéd won the BH Neumann Award of the Australian Mathematics Trust in 1994. The award citation credited her in particular for the flourishing of mathematics competitions in Australia and the success of Australia in international mathematics competitions.[3]

Later life, death and legacy

In 1985, Svéd completed a PhD at the University of Adelaide, at age 75.[3][6] Her dissertation, On finite linear and Baer structures, concerned finite geometry, and was supervised by Rey Casse.[3][6] Her 1991 book, Journey into Geometries (MAA Spectrum), has been described by reviewer David A. Thomas as an "Alice-in-Wonderland-type journey into non-Euclidean geometry", written in a conversational style.[7]

Svéd died on 30 September 2005, not long after the death of her friends, George and Esther Szekeres, who died within an hour of each other.[8][9]

Svéd's posthumously-published book Two Lives and a Bonus (Peacock Publications, 2006) documents her early life in Budapest.[10]

The University of Adelaide offers a scholarship for women mathematicians named in memory of Svéd.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b Maroske, Sara (16 September 2025). "Svéd, Márta (1910-2005)". Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation. Swinburne University of Technology. Retrieved 31 July 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Cowling, Michael (7 November 2005), "A world of teaching and numbers – times two", The Sydney Morning Herald (obituary of George and Esther Szekeres)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g BH Neumann Award citation, Australian Mathematics Trust, retrieved 6 April 2018
  4. ^ Schechter, Bruce (2000), My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős, Simon and Schuster, p. 55, ISBN 9780684859804
  5. ^ a b Howell, P. A. (6 March 2020). "George Svéd". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved 7 March 2026. This article was published: in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 19 , 2021; online in 2020
  6. ^ a b Márta Svéd at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  7. ^ Reviews of Journey into Geometries:
    • Thomas, David A. (November 1992). "Review: [Untitled]". The Mathematics Teacher. 85 (8): 690. JSTOR 27967867.
    • Fenton, William E. (April 1993), "Review: [Untitled]", The American Mathematical Monthly, 100 (4): 411–13, doi:10.2307/2324983, JSTOR 2324983
  8. ^ "Papers 1937–1995 (Sved, G., (George); Sved, Marta.; University of Adelaide. Dept. of Civil Engineering.; 1937-1995)". Adelaide University Library catalogue. Retrieved 7 March 2026. (In-library use only)
  9. ^ Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications, Volumes 46–48, 2006, p. 4, We regret to announce the loss of our three senior ICA members in Australia. George and Esther Szekeres died within an hour of one another, and Marta Sved died two days later. All were in their mid-nineties.
  10. ^ Sved, Marta (2006). Two Lives and a Bonus. Peacock Publications. ISBN 978-1-921008-28-3. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
  11. ^ "Márta Svéd Scholarship supporting women in maths". CSER STEM Professional Learning. 22 August 2025. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1rta_Sv%C3%A9d