Curnow

Roger Curnow, for many years a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Canberra, received a BH Neumann Award from Professor Neumann at a function at the Atlantic Restaurant, Manuka, Canberra on Friday 14 June 2002.

Roger Curnow receives his Award from Professor Neumann.

From left, Roger Curnow, son Tim, Professor Neumann, wife Gitte, son Richard and daughter-in-law Jenny.

Citation

Roger was born in 1941 near Mudgee, where his father was a primary school teacher. He spent his first 17 years in country NSW, attending in turn Port Macquarie, Bexhill, Empire Vale and Ballina primary schools, and Ballina, Orange and Nowra High Schools.

He spent his final school years in a class of one ; working essentially by himself. He claims this was a disaster, but it must have served him well for University study.

At Sydney University he found himself in third year doing nothing but mathematics. During the period he absorbed wisdom from all the usual suspects: Smith-White (far and away his favourite), Prof Room, a young Max Kelly and, he thinks in his first teaching year, John Mack.

He left Syd Uni at the end of 1961 for WRE at Salisbury, then best known as the civilised base for the Woomera but also at the time housing the best computer in the country, an IBM 7090. And though when given a choice between computers and rockets he chose rockets, he has been an IBM fan ever since, because this was, to him, one hell-of-a machine.

Before he was 21 he found himself as nominally in charge of a rocket firing. The next eight years were spent firing rockets and analysing the experimental consequences most of which were related to the density/temperature and tidal motion within the near space region.

Most of this time he was at Salisbury and Woomera but it included 2 years postgrad work at University College London (1965-66) with rocket firings for ESRO from Sardinia and the British Met Office from South Uist.

Towards the end of 1967 he was back at Salisbury and the next 12 months was spent working on WRESAT, a not oft remembered, but successful Australian satellite.

Following the launch of WRESAT it became apparent that money for near space research in Australia, never plentiful, was about to disappear altogether. So in 1969 he accepted a job in Operations Research with the Department of Supply/Defence in Canberra and soon found himself an expert in Mathematical Programming and Simulation.

Roger found that the great thing about mathematical modelling skills was their transferrability and he spent some time on secondment to the Department of Meteorology.

His inability to salute, and a growing feeling that the Public Service and Department of Defence was not for him, led him to look for other options.

So in 1975 when a lecturing job came up in Operations Research at the Canberra CAE, he applied. Roger believes that Bob Mitchell diverted the Academic Board's attention to slip him through for an interview, which proved successful. Roger knew Bob from the OR society with which they were both heavily involved for a while (Roger is still the Public Officer for the national society).

After a couple of years of teaching OR subjects Roger complained so loudly about how first year maths (particularly maths for others) was being taught he found himself landed with the task. Over the next twenty years he spent an enjoyable time interspersing units in maths programming, general OR units and "maths for others" with the odd tutorial in computing and stats and the odd real maths unit. He probably taught more students than any other mathematician in this period, particularly because of his association with the unit Mathematical Methods. In this role he developed a reputation as a student friendly lecturer. He was truly dedicated to the interest of the students, which students recognized, as regular visitors to his office. Roger, being effectively in charge of service teaching of mathematics, also became well known as the face of mathematics in other Schools, such as Applied Science, where he fought very hard to ensure that the students were taught mathematical skills properly, not always endearing himself to the academics in other schools.

Roger became assosciated with the Australian Mathematics Competition. He thinks he was at the first meeting at Peter O'Halloran's house but is not on the attendance "list". However he has always been a moderator and for many years a member of the AMF Committee. As a moderator he raised many issues we hadn't thought of, and although we reluctantly couldn't always follow his advice, he did always have it right. I remember that he always kept us on our toes with probability questions, where he really improved our methods as a result of his advice.

Roger enjoyed a great assosciation with the late Jo Edwards who started at CCAE the same day as he. Jo was certainly one of the AMC originals and also influenced the way Roger taught maths.

Roger's main claim to this award is his association with UC Maths Day. Malcolm Brooks and he were listed as the problem committee in its first year in 1982 and they have been ever since, with Roger listed as its Chairman. Roger has enjoyed a strong reputation for many memorable problems over this time, particularly in the design of the famous poster problems, where Roger has been in his element, constructing open-ended problems.

After twenty years and 45 months at the CCAE/UC (not quite enough to qualify for the 25 year pin) Roger took two years leave without pay from July 1995, to see if he could survive in the "real world". He worked essentially as an asset consultant which sort of meant financial modelling. What ever it meant to others, he wasn't sure, but to him it meant more mathematical programming and simulation; it did not (thankfully for Roger) mean stochastic calculus.

Roger was also internal consultant on all matters mathematical/statistical which to him was a lot of fun.

Roger was delighted to have working with him a couple of ex-students. But he was horrified at the lack of understanding of what a mathematical model is/isn't by some workmates, a total misunderstanding of what an average is and even worse their (and the population at large's) feel for probabilities and what they mean.

After 6 years of this he has decided he is old enough to retire and is now trying sequencing/scheduling techniques in the kitchen, not with a great deal of success.

Despite retirement he says he expects to continue to be associated with maths day for the foreseeable future.

He hopes also to continue to push mathematics or at least "quant techniques" at the grass roots level whenever and wherever the opportunity arises.

As a few further remarks we should also note

• Roger had a period on the NSW HSC moderation/scaling committee during the late 80s; and was delighted to be recognised by John Mack after 30 years with "real analysis, 1962". He was out by a year but impressive never-the-less.
• Roger served on the executive of the Canberra Mathematical Association in late 70s and 80s.
• Roger spent 6 months at the Open University in the UK in 1990.

Peter Taylor

Friday 14 June 2002