12 AMOC 2000-12

Overview

The decade 2000 and onwards saw new programs and general consolidation of existing events and organisation. Of the key office holders, as described below, Cheryl Praeger and David Hunt were Chair and Deputy for most of the period following the retirement of Anne Street.

Mike Newman took over as Treasurer from Phillip Edwards in 2003 and in turn he passed on the baton to Philip Swedosh in 2009.

Founding Director of Challenge Bruce Henry retired in 2006 passing the job on to Kevin McAvaney. Bruce continues as an active member of the committee.

Angelo Di Pasquale was Director of Training and IMO Team Leader for most of the period, having taken over from David Hunt in 2001 and temporarily passing on the Team Leader position to Ivan Guo just for the 2011 IMO.

Hans Lausch was Chairman of the AMOC Senior Problems Committee during the entire period, and Australia's administrator of APMO.

State Director positions were held as follows.

• New South Wales: Bill Palmer (with significant assistance from Geoff Ball)
• Victoria: Philip Swedosh
• Queensland: Neil Williams (in fact founding director and 1980 to 2000), Gary Carter (2001 to 2010), Victor Scharaschkin (since 2011)
• Western Australia: Elena Stoyanova (until 2005), Greg Gamble (since 2006)
• South Australia: Keith Hamann (until 2005), Michael Peake (since 2006)
• Tasmania: Warwick Evers (until 2003), Kumudini Dharmadasa (since 2004)
• Australian Capital Territory: John Carty (until 2012), James Hassall (2012)

To mark the end of an era, Anne Street presented Neil Williams with a memento at a dinner in Brisbane in April 2001.

Thrust into Primary Schools

As noted at the end of Chapter 7, the Challenge had been the first AMT event to go into Primary Schools when 3000 students entered the new Primary version in 1999. This event was basically intended for students in Years 5 and 6, or in Year 7 for those states where primary school included Year 7.

As part of the plan this was now being extended to the Enrichment stages. Bruce Henry basically masterminded the writing of a Newton book, which could typically be worked through by a talented Year 5 student and the Dirichlet book, intended for Year 6, although students could work on them if they were in a higher year level.

For writing the Newton book, Bruce was assisted by Anna Nakos, Lorraine Mottershead, Alice Thomas and Giovanna Vardaro. Alice (left) and Giovanna are shown above at a Challenge Problems Committee meeting in 2000. Anna, Lorraine and Alice, and also Andy Edwards, Katrina Sims and I complemented Bruce with writing various parts of the Dirichlet book. The Newton went public in 2002 and attracted almost 1500 entries. With the addition of the Dirichlet in 2003 there was a total of about 2000 Primary School entries from then. More recent (2013) considerations appear to be leading to offerings of at least the Challenge Stage to Years 3 and 4, while the Australian Mathematics Competition became available in Primary Schools from 2004.

Development of the Blazer Ceremony

Chapter 7 refers to early versions of the blazer ceremony, which nowadays, run in conjunction with ASI is AMOC's main public ceremony. Even in 2000 it was not a blazer ceremony. But the idea gained traction in a major way in 2000, when Minister for Education Dr David Kemp presided at a special event at the Olympic site just months before the Sydney Olympics. The ceremony was enhanced by the presence of two of Australia's Olympic Athletes.

The ceremony took place in Grand Foyer of the Sydney SuperDome on 12 May. The program, which adopted a fairly standard format, read as follows:

Professor Peter Taylor, Executive Director Australian Mathematics Trust, welcomes guests and Mathematics and Science Olympiad team members.

Ms Jane Jamieson, current Australian Heptathlon champion and member of the 1996 Atlanta team speaks on what it takes to succeed in an international arena.

Ms Michelle Marsh, Executive Director Rio Tinto Australian Science Olympiads, welcomes Mr Barry Cusack, Managing Director Rio Tinto Australia.

Mr Barry Cusack speaks and invites The Hon. Dr David Kemp, Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs to speak and to present teams.

Dr David Kemp speaks and presents team members with a letter of congratulations.

Professor Taylor thanks Dr Kemp and invites guests to join the teams for afternoon tea.

Whereas we had started sending Informatics teams to IOI it took some time before they were to be formally recognised by government. ASI were also reluctant, for understandable reasons, to recognise Informatics if it reduced the support for their Olympiads. As a result Informatics was not yet represented at this function. However the South Korean-bound mathematics team was, and members were individually congratulated by Dr Kemp. Here is the team after the ceremony, with from left Allan Sly, Peter McNamara, David Chan, Thomas Xia, Geoffrey Chu and Thomas Sewell.

After the ceremony also are shown Michelle Marsh, who had been a successful long-term Executive Director of ASO, Peter Taylor, Dr David Kemp, Jane Jamieson, Mr Barry Cusack and a member of Australia's Swimming team, who may have been Rob Woodhouse.

In 2001 there was another ceremony in which Senator Nick Minchin, Minister for Science, hosted at Parliament House and Informatics was admitted for the first time. Four of the members of the Washington-bound IMO team only attended, and are shown, from left David Chan, Hugh Miller, Yiying (Sally) Zhou and Bobbi Ramchen, with Peter Taylor, Senator Minchin and Angelo Di Pasquale.

In 2002 Peter McGaurin, who had been such a strong supporter of the Olympiads as Opposition Science spokesman before the 1996 election, was now Minister for Science, and hosted the first blazer ceremony. He is shown above at the ceremony with the IMO team bound for Glasgow. From left the team is Yiying (Sally) Zhou, Stewart Wilcox, Gareth White, Nicholas Sheridan, Andrew Kwok and David Chan.

From this point of time a ceremony at which blazers have been presented has always been held in Parliament House, featuring the five teams. Guests of Honour have sometimes been Ministers for Education, such as Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop and Peter Garrett, but also others, including a Chairman of the House Committee for Science, Chief Scientists and a Chair of the Australian Research Council.

Here is the 2005 IMO team with Education Minister Brendan Nelson. From left Minister Nelson, Graham White, Konrad Pilch, Sam Chow, Stephen Muirhead, Vinoth Nandakumar and Kim Ramchen.

Here is the Slovenian-bound 2006 IMO team with Education Minister Julie Bishop. With the Minister are Matthew Ng, Graham White, Konrad Pilch, Vinh Tham, Charles Li and Vinoth Nandakumar.

And here is the Amsterdam-bound 2011 IMO team at the blazer ceremony with Education Minister Peter Garrett. With the Minister are Nancy Fu, Declan Gorey, Timothy Large, Colin Lu, Yanning Xu and Angel Yu and Team Leader Ivan Guo.

2000 IMO, Taejon, another Gold Medal

The 2000 IMO was held in Taejon, a city in the centre of South Korea between Seoul and Busan. The retreat for leaders was held in a modern complex out of Seoul used for specialist training courses. By now it had become the custom for leaders to be normally given good, fast access to the internet, except for the quarantine periods, and this retreat was certainly well equipped.

Above is a photo of the 2000 IMO Jury, with in the front row Anglophones from left Michael Albert (New Zealand), Imre Leader (UK), Titu Andreescu (USA) and Nic Heideman (South Africa).

We sent a very interesting team, with Geoffrey Chu, a leading Gold Medallist from the year before aiming to become Australia's first dual Gold Medallist. This had unsuccessfully been sought before, by Stephen Farrar in 1998, but he had gone back to Bronze. Pressure is great and we tried to downplay it.

Unfortunately for Geoffrey, despite writing very high standard solutions, as he did, he missed a couple of critical details of questions, and he won a Silver. However a record of a Gold and two Silvers was something to be proud of, and at the time Australia's best. Peter McNamara, however did win a Gold. His paper was a masterpiece. For the difficult Problem 5 he generalised the problem and his solution read more like a research paper than an Olympiad exam answer. Allan Sly and Thomas Sewell also won Silver while Thomas Xia won Bronze, and the team finished a very respectable 16th. Problem 3 was arguably the most difficult in the paper. Only 14 solutions were obtained internationally, mostly using the if and only if arguments found by the Jury (one direction of which was very difficult). But Allan Sly did solve the problem, brilliantly, using a unique direct method after he spotted an invariant in the problem.

Peter's Gold Medal was presented by the President of South Korea, and they are shown together above at the Closing Ceremony.

2000 to 2002 approx: Stalwarts and nonagenarians

After 5 years as Chair of AMOC, Professor Anne Street retired in 2001 and passed on the baton to Cheryl Praeger. Anne had a distinguished record particularly in the field of combinatorics.

David presents Anne with a memento at the annual AMOC dinner.

Cheryl Praeger, one of Australia's most distinguished mathematicians, became chair and here she is at her first meeting as such in 2002. From left are Michael Evans, Warren Atkins (AMF rep), Angelo Di Pasquale (Director of Training and Team Leader), Elena Stoyanova (WA Director), Warwick Evers (Tasmania Director), Philip Swedosh (Victoria Director), Peter Taylor, Daniel Mathews (Deputy Leader), Mike Newman (who was about to become Treasurer), Cheryl Praeger, Bill Palmer (NSW Director), Bob Bryce (Challenge Committee), David Hunt (Deputy Chair), John Dowsey (Challenge Committee), Keith Hamann (SA Director), Hans Lausch (Senior Problems Committee and APMO Chair), Andrei Storozhev (Editor), Bruce Henry (Challenge Director) and Gary Carter (Queensland Director).

The above photo shows Marjorie O'Halloran, Bernhard Neumann and Eleanor and John Burns. At the time of writing this history, at the end of 2012, Marjorie, Peter O'Halloran's widow, is still in good health living in Canberra and keeping up her interests in Romance languages and travel. John Burns was the first Secretary/Treasurer of AMOC. He was long time Professor of Maths at Duntroon and was a highly respected leader of his department. He and Eleanor also still live in Canberra at the end of 2012 and John, originally a New Zealander from Auckland, and I enjoyed many conversations. He has a fascinating history of having been supervised for his PhD at Cambridge by Sir James Lighthill, one of the prodigies of British mathematics of the 20th century, who was awarded an FRS at the age of 29. Lighthill died a few years ago swimming around the island of Sark and had swum around many Channel and Scilly Islands as a personal fitness regime. He was one of the great eccentrics of British mathematics, like GH Hardy, and John had many interesting recollections of these times.

The period of about 2000 to 2002 was also an interesting time as it was a period in which we were blessed with the presence of three nonagenarians. The first of these was Bernhard Neumann himself, who turned 90 in October 1999. The Trust held a major celebration for this event in the Great Hall of University House at the ANU. Trust Chair Don Aitkin presented Bernhard with one of the legendary silver trays which he in turn had presented to many others, wearing his white gloves.

This was followed in 2000 and 2001 by 90th birthdays for George and Esther Szekeres. Esther is shown above celebrating at her March 2000 birthday, at the home of David Hunt. George followed in June 2001 with a formal seminar which attracted famous mathematicians from around the world, including John Coates, the Sadleirian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University who had been born at Possum Brush, near Taree.

2001 IMO, Washington, first dual Gold Medallist

The 2001 IMO was held in Washington. The leaders stayed at the Embassy Suites near Du Pont Circle, one of only two IMOs I attended (the other being 1997 Mar del Plata) in which the leaders did not have the annoying procedure of spending a day changing hotels.

From Australia's point of view its result was about normal overall, but stood out for a few particular reasons. This was the second time our team had two girls, and both, Sally Zhou and Bobbi Ramchen, won Bronze Medals. But the IMO was probably more historic as Peter McNamara became the first student to win a second Gold Medal, with another superlative performance. He thus retired from IMOs with two Gold and a Bronze Medal, also the best Australian tally.

The overall medal tally was a Gold and four Bronze, with David Chan and Stewart Wilcox notching the other two Bronzes.

With a year to go the organisers had not been successful in raising any money, but during the year a lot of money was raised from three foundations, including the Clay Foundation, making it very well endowed with a spectacular Closing Ceremony in the Kennedy Centre. A real highlight aslso was the closing day in which famous former Gold Medallists were flown in, including Terry Tao from at the time Canberra's winter. Sir Andrew Wiles also spoke at the Closing Ceremony. Chapter A2 has photos of Sir Andrew presenting Peter's Gold Medal and Terry with the Australian team.

2002 IMO, Glasgow

The 2002 IMO had been slated for the Philippines, but they had withdrawn with only just over a year's notice. The UK generously offered to host, and impressively raised good money, all from the private sector, and ran a nice IMO with little notice. The leader's retreat was held in the splendid Hilton facility at Dunblane, and they moved to a Glasgow Hotel during the exams, nearer the students.

Australia again won a Gold Medal, now for the fourth consecutive year, and making 6 in 6 years. This medal was won by the returning Stewart Wilcox, and he received this medal from Princess Anne (photo in Chapter A2).

Stewart's Gold was supplemented by David Chan, participating for the third time, and Nicholas Sheridan, both with Silver, while Sally Zhou repeated her Bronze Medal performance in Washington.

2003 IMO, Tokyo

I did not attend this IMO, and the only photo I have is the one to be seen in Chapter A2. Australia came 26th of 82 teams and gained 2 Silver and 2 Bronze Medals, as well as 2 Honourable Mentions. This was a completely new team, with the medallists being Lawrence Field and Daniel Nadasi, both from Sydney and Silver, with the Bronze Medallists being Ross Atkins from Adelaide and Ivan Guo from Sydney. Both Ross and Ivan were to have stronger roles in the coming years.

2004 IMO, Athens

I did not attend this IMO either, due to a commitment to attend ICME-10 in Copenhagen, which clashed and again my only photo is the one in Chapter A2. The team came 27th but Ivan Guo won a Gold Medal, making it 7 Golds in 8 years. There were two other students returning, including Lawrence Field with another Silver and Daniel Nadasi with a Bronze. Alex Hua also won a Bronze.

2005 AMT Restructure

In 2005 there was a significant restructure in which the Subtrusts, each with their own balance sheets and nominal financial autonomy (especially if they were trading without subsidy) became departments of a more centralised Trust. This had little impact on AMOC but it is for chapter 14 for more detailed discussion.

2005 Challenge Committee

Here is a photo of the Challenge committee in 2005. From left Anna Nakos, Peter Taylor, Lorraine Mottershead, Steve Thornton, Andy Edwards, Bruce Henry, Katrina Sims, Janine McIntosh, Giovanna Vardaro, Bob Bryce, Andre Storozhev, Berry Ferguson (Canadian visitor) and Hans Lausch.

2005 IMO, Merida

The Mexican IMO will be remembered as the one hit by a category 5 hurricane. It was held at Merida, an old town with Spanish architecture on the Yucatan peninsula.

The team had the coincidental record of 6 Bronze medals, to Sam Chow, Stephen Muirhead, Vinoth Nandakumar, Konrad Pilch, Kim Ramchen and Graham White.

After the exams we had the excursion to Chichen Itza, the most famous Mayan site. When we returned hurricane Emily was bearing down on us and our rooms were prepared as above, where Angelo checks something on my computer while staff are taping my window, and we spent the evening in the hotel basement.

2006 IMO, Ljubljana

Two members of the 2005 team in Konrad Pilch and Graham White returned and won Silver Medals, as also did Charles Li. There were also two Bronze Medals, won by Vinoth Nandakumar (also returning) and Vinh Pham.

The Team Leaders' retreat was held on the Adriatic Coast at Portoroz, while the main excursion was to the north and north west of the country to Bled and Kransjke Gora, the main ski resort.

Here is the team relaxing at the excursion at Kransjke Gora, from left Graham White, Matthew Ng, Vinh Pham, Norman Do, Charles Li, Vinoth Nandakumar, Konrad Pilch and Angelo Di Pasquale.

2007 IMO, Hanoi

Whereas the team had been placed 25th and 26th in the previous two IMOs, on this occasion the team made some improvement to be placed 22nd. It was in fact a team with no IMO experience, and the medal count was one Silver (Max Menzies) and four Bronze (Irene Lo, Ildar Gaisin, Giles Gardam and Anthony Morris).

Irene was the first girl to make the team since Sally Zhao in 2002 and she had originally been the team reserve, but she got her opportunity and took it well. Ildar was an interesting member who had had only recent experience in mathematics but had taken all before him.

The Team Leader retreat was at Ha Long, one of the world's most famous heritage sites. One of the interesting parts of the retreat were the intense security arrangements, which involved not only cutting off internet and any conceivable access to communication, but the hotel was surrounded by a contingent of the Vietnamese army to make sure the leaders did not venture outside the hotel. Another feature was the extremely hot and humid conditions, which were the most extreme I ever experienced anywhere and made it difficult to go outside the hotel anyway.

At check in at Hanoi airport for the journey home are Ildar Gaisin, Max Menzies, Giles Gardam, Anthony Morris, Sen Lin, Irene Lo and guide Chi.

2008 The Mathematics Ashes

During our musings in Ha Long in 2007, long-time British stalwart Geoff Smith and I agreed in principle to establishing a Mathematics Ashes for annual competition between Australia and the UK. I offered to donate the trophy. I went to a local funeral parlour in Canberra and bought a real urn, and also bought a trophy for bragging rights for the winning leader.

The rules would not be written out, but it was assumed both teams would attempt to train together before each IMO with a pre-nominated exam being the official competition. It was understood this might not always be possible so in this event it was agreed that the IMO itself would substitute as the official exam.

The 2008 IMO was to be in Madrid. The UK Mathematics Trust, with access to various schools of British influence, found a school in Portugal and the two teams trained together there for the week before the IMO.

As it happened Australia won the inaugural event, with a strong team in which Max Menzies, Irene Lo and Giles Gardam were all returning from the previous year with a range of Silver and Bronze Medals.

At the IMO itself, once the teams were with their leaders again we arranged a burning and presentation ceremony. To follow the cricket tradition the losing team burnt their exam scripts, and then we sealed the urn.

The urn was then presented to the winning team. Above is the Australian team, from left Irene Lo, Max Menzies, Paul Cheung, Sampson Wong, Andrew Elvey Price and Giles Gardam.

The initial leaders, from left Peter Taylor, Geoff Smith and Angelo Di Pasquale.

At the end of this history period, the Ashes have proved a popular event with the students, and has been held every year, with the British team winning all the remaining ones until 2012 with the exception of one tie. The Australian and British students have developed a special relationship. The only thing that I regret is that since this initiative most of the Australian team have gone to Cambridge for their first degrees. This may be good for the students, but for a first degree Australian Universities are still very good, and it has meant that there have been few former Olympians to work at the training camps.

2008 IMO, Madrid

The performance of the Australian team, placed 19th, was the first time back in the top 20 for several years, and we were back to beating most of our traditional rivals such as those in Western Europe and Canada.

In a most unusual medal distribution for us, we won no less than 5 Silver Medals (Max Menzies, Giles Gardam, Paul Cheung, Irene Low and Andrew Elvey Price) while Sampson Wong won a Bronze Medal.

A major landmark was Irene Lo's Silver, the first by an Australian girl. Irene became an inspiring role model for other girls, and for the remainder of this history our team always had at least one girl, and a girl winning a medal. Role models like Irene can do much more for helping girls' performances than artificial methods, such as using quotas, which in my view entrench a divide.

The team is seen here arriving for the Closing Ceremony, which was presided by the Crown Prince of Spain. From left are Giles, Irene, Max, Sampson, Andrew and Paul. Hans Lausch can be seen in the background between Irene and Max.

Norman Do had worked as Deputy with Angelo Di Pasquale for 6 years and this was to be the last of the partnership as Norman was moving overseas for a while. Here Angelo thanks Norman for his contribution.

The Leaders' retreat was at La Granja, an interesting place about 50km from Madrid, which was the scene of much of Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls set in the Spanish Civil War.

2009 IMO, Bremen

I was not at the 2009 IMO but from all accounts it was a blockbuster. The German hosts had a big budget and ran the event in style, with famous former Gold Medallists flown in, a special seminar day with them speaking, a record number of teams (104) and an elaborate video made.

It was also a historic time for the Australian team. It was only the second time in which Australia won two Gold Medals, Andrew Elvey Price and Sampson Wong. And it was one in which the team contained two girls, Stacey Law and Dana Ma. Both would have won medals but Dana, after a good score on the first day, became ill. Despite the good individual outcomes, the team slipped just outside the top 20 to 23rd position. Aaron Chong won a Silver Medal and Stacey Law and Alfred Liang both won Bronze to make the tally 2 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze.

Of course one of the famous Gold Medallists flown in was our Fields Medallist Terry Tao. Above are shown four of Australia's Gold medallists including the new ones, from left Andrew Elvey Price, Ivan Guo (now Deputy Team Leader), Terry Tao and Sampson Wong.

2010 IMO, Astana

Kazakhstan turned out to be a rather complicated event, with the leaders startin in Almaty, on the Sil Route, below big mountains where the Kygizia border was somewhere up the top, and moving to futuristic capital Astana for the main proceedings, while the students started in Astana and moved up to a camp near the Russian border. The deputies were further separated to a camp in some proximity of the students.

Despite the ambitious logistic issues there was a massive amount of money obvious in the budget as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were spectacular and leaders transferred from Almaty to Astana by plane, the only time I ever travelled by plane as such in about 10 IMOs and another 10 IOIs. The Opening Ceremony featured no less than Ulytau, one of the world's most high-profile heavy metal rock bands, native to Kazakhstan and featuring one key player with a Kazak two-string guitar and another with a violin.

Overall the team got one of Australia's outstanding results, 15th of 96 countries with yet another Gold with Aaron Chong and emphasising the role of girls in the team Stacey Law getting Australia's second Silver Medal for girls. Two other Silver Medals were won, by Sampson Wong and Kiho Park and Timothy Large won a Bronze Medal.

Angelo is seen above working while on leaders' transport in the first stage somewhere in Astana.

Members of the Australian team are shown with British Team Leader James Cranch, before the Closing Ceremony.

Stacey is seen after the Closing Ceremony with Hans Lausch, Peter Taylor, Ivan Guo and Angelo Di Pasquale.

At most IMOs there is a banquet following the closing ceremony, with each team having their own table. Here at the Australian table are from left Aaron, Sampson, David, Kiho, Stacey and Timothy.

2011 IMO, Amsterdam

Angelo was unavailable to attend this year's IMO, due to his marriage. As a result Ivan Guo became Leader and Graham White Deputy. Ross Atkins, who was by now living in Europe came to the IMO to help Ivan and Graham with the coordination.

In this year, with the IMO in Europe again, the Australian and British teams trained together at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Here they are at camp, from left Graham White (deputy Leader), Colin, Declan, Timothy, Nancy, Angel, Yanning, Ivan Guo (Leader).

This is the Ashes exam, which the teams tied. The Australian team is at left, led by Nancy in front.

At IMOs the Opening Ceremony is held in a theatre with two levels, due to the Leaders' group knowing the exam papers, and need to keep them separate from the students. At the ceremony each team is paraded in turn. Here, seen from above is the Australian team.

The team was placed 25th and there was a respectable medal count with all obtaining medals. Timothy, Yanning and Declan won Silver while Nancy, Angel and Colin won Bronze. There is a photo in Chapter A2 of the team with medals also including Ross.

The Leaders' retreat was held at Eindhoven, in the south of the country.

2012 IMO, Mar del Plata

Due to my attendance at ICME-12 in Seoul I did not attend this IMO and have no further photographs than that in Chapter A2. However the team trained with the British team in Buenos Aires before the IMO with the British winning the Ashes, and at the IMO Australia was placed 27th with a clean sweep of medals (2 Silver and 4 Bronze).

The Silver Medals were won by Yanning Xu and Kaimyn Chapman, with Nancy Fu, Jason Kwong, John Papantoniou and Alexander Gunning all winning Bronze.