This history would not be complete without reference to two events which were not under the administration of the Trust, but the Trust supplied administrative support and there were personnel in common to those involved with Trust activity.
Friday Night Enrichment Program
In 1965, two ANU research mathematicians, Dr Laci Kovacs and Dr Mike Newman, founded a regular enrichment program for local high school students on Friday evening after school, based on the model in Debrecen, Hungary, that had encouraged Laci. For 10 to 20 weeks each year, on Friday evenings during the school year, Mike and Laci would provide challenging mathematics for all students in the Canberra region who wished to attend. The atmosphere was informal, with drinks and biscuits supplied.
Typical attendance on any evening was between 20 and 30 students. Mike and Laci were also helped by a number of other people. What was very helpful in the early years was the support of some teachers, one in particular being Joan Robson (who also tutored mathematics at the Canberra College of Advanced Education). The ANU was also very supportive, with Hanna Neumann, Professor of Pure Mathematics in the School of General Studies being very encouraging and ANU's School of General Studies Registrar Colin Plowman enabling access to the facilities and kitchen. At times students were ferried in from surrounding towns. Brian Smith would bring students from Goulburn and others would come from Yass and Cooma. And as is the case of volunteers mentioned throughout this history, Mike's and Laci's families were supportive, despite their absence from home during the activities.
As referred to and discussed in Chapter 03, in 1988 while attending ICME-6 in Budapest I was approached by Bulgarians to introduce the Tournament of Towns in Australia. I had discussions with Mike and Laci, also involving my colleague Malcolm Brooks and ANU's Bob Bryce. Mike agreed it was time for a new focus and was amenable to making the Tournament a theme. Whereas Mike stayed on for a few years, Malcolm, Bob and I gradually took over the teaching and organisation. There were initially concerns the Tournament would be too hard, but we found a way. We did limit attendance by performance in the AMC. We generally invited about the top 60 or so students in Canberra, and about half of these would attend. We also split the group into a Senior Group (years 11 and 12) and a Junior Group (years 7 to 10, not many years 7). In the early years students such as Andrew Hassell, Leon Poladian and the Stone twins would come and help.
During the 1990s and early 2000s Malcolm became the most frequent teacher of the Senior group, while I focused on the Juniors. We got some good results. I would argue that the sessions (including the ones before 1988) probably helped students like Ben Robinson, Ian Wanless, William Hawkins, Allan Sly and Kester Tong make the IMO teams and win medals, and a lot of other students were reserves or otherwise came close. Others also went on to prominence: for example, Patricia Hewitt, who became a minister in the British government of Tony Blair, sustainable energy scientist Andrew Blakers and musicologist, linguist and University administrator Malcolm Gillies.
Increasingly, particularly with my absences, Andrei Storozhev became a regular teacher, and in fact for a while he also held further classes on Sunday afternoons. By 2012 the classes were continuing, Bob Bryce was still arranging the facilities, students were still writing the Tournament, but teaching had been completely taken over by an enthusiastic group of mathematicians from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation based in Canberra.
There have been other groups in other cities (Russians would call theirs and ours `Circles'), some closely related to us, others not related. The most famous in Australia would have been the so-called Chatswood program, where University of Sydney mathematician, assisted by Esther Szekeres and others, would run classes on Friday evenings.
The Tournament of Towns spawned a number of groups like ours in other cities. The most energetic was David Paget in Tasmania. His group produced a disproportionate number of Tasmania IMO representatives at the time, including James Lefevre, William Hart and Gordon Deane. Jamie Simpson and later Greg Gamble ran a very strong group which was still functioning through 2012. This group produced IMO medallists Peter McNamara and Angel Yu. In Melbourne, Lawrence Doolan first set up a group, which included Angelo Di Pasquale as a student, while later Angelo revived the group into a very strong one. Newcastle and Toowoomba briefly had groups also. And there was a successful group in Christchurch led by Bob Long and later one in Kuala Lumpur.
Mathematics Day
Our good friend, Professor George Berzsenyi, was in 1982 a Professor at Lamar University in Beaumont Texas. As such he ran a mathematics day for high school students, in which teams from local schools came together for a day to undertake various activities, mostly of a competitive nature.
Peter O'Halloran decided to run a day at the Canberra College of Advanced Education, of similar nature, and invited George to be here, not just for the established routine of having an overseas guest to work on the following year's AMC problems committee, but to act as an on-site consultant for what was to be known as CCAE Maths Day.
In 1982 the event was run on a Saturday. In future years, however it was changed to a Friday as schools were quite happy to release students for this purpose. In fact it was always held on the last Friday of each May, and combined with the presence of AMC visitors who normally acted as judges. Peter designed a very ornate trophy, in the shape of a dodecahedron, for the top school. Events also included a team event (in which students could discuss a problem as a group), a Swiss event, an individual event and finally a relay, which had the effect of students being placed in opposite ends of the CCAE gym, and running to the other end when a solution is achieved for the team to continue at that end.
Another unique part of the event was a poster contest. In this, an open-ended sort of problem was set which students solved on a poster. One I remember was a parking problem in which a large area was specified, and asking schools to divide it into car parks in a way which maximised the number of parks.
The event very much became the domain of two of my colleagues, Malcolm Brooks and Roger Curnow, who did most of the work, mathematical and otherwise for many years. In addition the Trust (and its predecessor continued to provide significant infrastructure support.
In 1990, when the CCAE became a University, Maths Day was renamed to University of Canberra Maths Day, or UC Maths Day.
The day continued to be held past Malcolm's and Roger's retirements, but mathematics at UC was in decline and they had no obvious successors there. After the 2005 event they announced that the event would no longer be held. This caused a great amount of concern among the schools. Some mathematics teachers, led by Copland College Deputy Principal Gerard Barrett, worked very hard to find a way continue the event, and Gerard finally persuaded the Australian National University to take it on. And so the event continued through my retirement in much the same way. The Trust Office kept giving advice, but the organising infrastructure was taken over by the ANU. In the ANU Mathematics Department, Dr Stephen Roberts took over the role of Malcolm and Roger, being the MC and also ensuring the mathematical content.