1996: First Awareness
I first became aware of the existence of the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in 1996. While on the Board of the Australian Science Olympiads (ASO), which administered the role of Australia in the Olympiads in Physics, Chemistry and Biology, they sent an Observer to the 1996 event in Hungary.
I soon realised this was a significant event, larger in fact than either of these Science Olympiads already despite young age and not that much smaller than Mathematics. Furthermore the event had a very neat structure, with students writing programs which could be marked automatically. And this was despite the fact the event had only started in 1989.
We were aware of other Olympiads, such as Astronomy and Linguistics, but here was a broad-brush science like the four which the Australian Government had resumed supporting. The appearance of a fifth broad brush discipline, especially if it was independent of the existing organisations, would complicate matters, such as government negotiation and thin our support.
However it was also important for the possible organisation that it had proper infrastructure and our feeling was that informatics should be part of one of us, whichever of us would provide the better synergy.
The 1996 report from the ASO observer was not particularly conclusive and it seemed obvious that Informatics would fit better with AMT.
I also had a personal interest, more so than most mathematicians, because my field was numerical analysis. I had worked in four computer science departments (Adelaide University as a graduate student, University of Canberra, where I taught computer programming as well as mathematics, the Open University, and ADFA), taught computer programming and had written a suite of numerical analysis programs of the order of 10,000 lines of code which was used in undergraduate teaching at the University of Canberra, using the same menuing system as used at the Open University, and which I maintained through the period of my employment and onward.
1997: AMT Involvement
During 1997 I started to identify people who might be appropriate to form such an organisation, likely to be a third Subtrust.
In the meantime I would attend the 1997 IOI, which was in Cape Town in December, strangely held four or five months later than usual to take advantage of the Southern summer, and maybe to get accommodation after the University had broken up.Â
First Olympiads can leave an effect. They always return to me as the definition of an Olympiad. Probably though that is a little unfair, as this was not necessarily typical. However it was very well organised, by a local businessman, Lionel Hartman, who had worked in Old Mutual. Old Mutual was the South African equivalent of AMP in Australia, and had started sponsoring the mathematics competitions there, with the encouragement of mathematician John Webb, Lionel and the actuaries, who I had met on an earlier mathematical visit.
The Cape Town IOI drew no support from the government, which regarded Olympiads as elitist. But Lionel was an expert fund-raiser, and had been around the various companies where he had connections and put the necessary resources together.
The culture of an IOI was quite different in many ways to that of an IMO. There were certainly different traditions. But it was definitely effective and I was convinced we had to join up.
1998: Off the ground
There were enough viable people and the following attended an initial meeting at Monash University on 07 February 1998 and formed an interim committee of what we called the Australian Informatics Olympiad Committee (AIOC), a counterpart of AMOC.
Peter Taylor. I was elected Interim Chairman (maybe a little like Peter O'Halloran had been interim chairman when AMOC started).
Dr Robbie Gates. Robbie had been regarded as the unluckiest person not to have represented Australia at IMO. He had been a good mathematics student, steeped in traditions of Sydney University, but now branching out into industry in computing. Robbie was elected as Team Leader
Dr Benjamin Burton. Ben had been a star IMO performer, having won a Gold Medal at his only IMO, in Moscow in 1992. Ben was working on a PhD which embraced Algebra and Computing, at the University of Melbourne, under the supervision of Hyam Rubinstein. He was elected Director of Training and Deputy Team Leader.
Dr Geoffrey Bailey. Another Sydney University stalwart. He had been in the Australian IMO team in 1988 when held in Australia. He said he never flew in a plane so being in Australia was the only way he would have participated. He was working on computer algebra programs at Sydney University.
Professor Michael Wagner, of the University of Canberra.
Dr David Clark, Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Canberra. He was elected Treasurer.
Dr David Dowe, Senior Lecturer in Computing at Monash. He was hosting the meeting.
There was discussion on a few items. One was on the name "Informatics". This was a particularly difficult issue because the word was virtually unused in Australia. But we decided we had little choice but stick with it. Another was finance. I pointed out the difficulties but promised infrastructure support from the Trust.
It was decided that it would be too late to select a team properly for the 1998 IOI, but we persuaded IOI to allow us to send this time Robbie Gates as an Observer to Portugal.
And we decided to hold a national Olympiad, at this stage named Australian Informatics Competition (AIC) later in the year, in September, enabling us to find students to train in camp and select a team for 1999.
My records do not indicate how many entries were received, but the results can be seen here.
1998: IOI Presence
Whereas I had attended the 1997 IOI as "Leader" Robbie Gates was able to do this again for the Portugal IOI.
1999: A full Subtrust
All was now in place. Professor John O'Callaghan, a former Head of the CSIRO Division of Computing, had agreed to Chair the ongoing committee, and Professor David Abramson, of Monash University, took the position of Deputy Chairman. John was able to represent the Technical Sciences and Engineering Academy, while David represented the Australian Computer Society.
And on 06 May 1999 the Board of the Australian Mathematics Trust established the Committee as its third Subtrust.
1999: Australia debuts at IOI
As noted in Chapter A3, Australia formally participated for the first time at Antalya, Turkey (it is noted that an earlier, informal, but successful team of three had earlier participated). This team, under the leadership of Robbie Gates and deputy Ben Burton was successful at this first attempt in winning two Bronze Medals, to Peter Hawkins (brother of Silver and Bronze IMO Medallist William) and Ka-Shu Wong. We were now fully operational.