George Szekeres

George Szekeres
George Szekeres, 2001
Born	(1911-05-29)29 May 1911 Budapest, Hungary
Died	28 August 2005(2005-08-28) (aged 94) Adelaide, Australia
Residence	Hungary China Australia
Nationality	Hungarian-Australian
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	University of Adelaide University of New South Wales
Alma mater	Technical University of Budapest
Doctoral students	John Schutz Alfred van der Poorten
Known for	Szekeres snark Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates Erdős–Szekeres theorem
Notable awards	Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal (1968)

George Szekeres AM (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈsɛkɛrɛʃ]; 29 May 1911 – 28 August 2005) was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician.

Szekeres was born in Budapest, Hungary, as Szekeres György and received his degree in chemistry at the Technical University of Budapest. He worked six years in Budapest as an analytical chemist. He married Esther Klein in 1936. Being Jewish, the family had to escape from the Nazi persecution so Szekeres took a job in Shanghai, China. There they lived through World War II, the Japanese occupation and the beginnings of the Communist revolution. Their son, Peter, was born in Shanghai.

In 1948, he was offered a position at the University of Adelaide, Australia, that he gladly accepted. After all the troubles he had, he began flourishing as a mathematician. A few years later, his daughter Judy was born. In 1963, the family moved to Sydney, where Szekeres took a position at the University of New South Wales, and taught there until his retirement in 1975. He also devised problems for secondary school mathematical olympiads run by the university where he taught, and for a yearly undergraduate competition run by the Sydney University Mathematics Society.

Szekeres worked closely with many prominent mathematicians throughout his life, including Paul Erdős, Esther Szekeres (née Esther Klein), Pál Turán, Béla Bollobás, Ronald Graham, Alf van der Poorten, Miklós Laczkovich, and John Coates.