Hoffman

Dr Nathan (Norm) Hoffman receives his award from Professor Neumann at a function at the Perth Parmelia Hotel on 5 March 1998. His wife Leila is at left.

Citation

Dr Nathan (Norm) Hoffman is an outstanding example of a BH Neumann Award recipient, with most of his activities external to the Trust.

He has been involved in mathematics enrichment programmes for nearly forty years.

In the mid 1960s he was part of a small team assembled and led by Professor Larry Blakers that provided the first state-wide programmes for talented Year 11 students. (These programmes were the fore-runner of the national programme that Larry Blakers established as the Australian Mathematics Summer School.

In 1980 Norm became the Australian Mathematical Olympiad Committee's first WA State Director.

For the past seven years Norm has provided after-school classes for able primary and secondary school students. To illustrate the scope of these classes in 1997 almost 200 students were involved in these classes. Seventy of these students participated in the Mathematics Challenge for Young Australians at the Euler, Gauss and Noether levels (there is also a fourth, most advanced level called Polya).

The remaining students, all primary students, participated in a year-long programme which Norm devised specially for them.

Norm taught classes on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, while his colleague Tony Edwards took the Euler class on Tuesday afternoons. So these statistics for 1997 indicate the scale of the organisation which Norm has developed.

Peter Taylor

05 March 1998