Posted Sunday 15 June 2008

Ben Burton received a BH Neumann Award at a function at the Riverwalk Hotel, Melbourne, on Friday 13 June 2008. The Award was presented by AMT Executive Director Professor Peter Taylor.

Peter Taylor presents the award to Ben.

Ben, with from left uncle Daniel Rees, sister Sarah Chippendale, partner Umit Ozer, father Graeme and mother Jan, at the presentation.

Ben was born in Brisbane, and lived and went to school in Logan City. His parents were both teachers: his mother Jan taught year seven at a local primary school, and his father Graeme taught maths and computing at a local high school. Throughout his childhood his family nurtured in him interests in puzzles, music and creativity and he also developed an early interest in computers, which in those days required a need to program. He also developed a knowledge of Japanese while at school.

By Year 10, success in mathematics competitions led to an invitation to him from Queensland Maths Olympiad Director Neil Williams to do further mathematics training.This training program opened Ben's eyes to mathematics and it had a dramatic effect. By Year 12 he was selected in the Australian team to participate at the Internatinal Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

Ben undertook a strict training regime which has now become a model for others. Every day for the 90-odd days between selection and participation Ben attempted successfully to solve two IMO-style problems without accessing the solutions. By the time he got to the IMO he was excellently prepared and was successful in winning a Gold Medal, placing him among the very elite of students internationally.

Ben was sufficiently motivated by this experience to proceed to study pure mathematics at university, and he completed a science degree at the University of Queensland, extending to science/arts, studying also psychology, physics, computer science and linguistics. The linguistics particularly took his interest, to the point where he almost moved into natural language processing for his PhD.

University also rekindled Ben's interest in music and he began to spend time in the university choir, experiencing such events as singing Mahler's 8th with near to 1000 performers. On a much smaller scale, Ben and some friends started a five-person singing group that was largely social, though they did perform at the odd wedding or community event.

As Ben's undergraduate career progressed he could see a clear pathway towards research and tasted some of this by attending a National Mathematics Summer School, which was research-oriented and he started looking looking into some problems in combinatorics. In fact his Honours thesis under the supervision of Diane Donovan included an interesting problem involving latin squares.

For his next step he enrolled in a PhD at the University of Melbourne, studying geometry and topology, under the supervision of Hyam Rubinstein. During his PhD studies his interest in programming came back to the fore where he began to work in designing and implementing mathematical algorithms.

At this time also he wanted to put back some of what he had learned into helping the next generation of students. He became a tutor at the National Mathematics Summer School (with Terry Gagen) and also at the Australian Mathematical Olympiad training camps (with David Hunt). He also formed a team of undergraduates at the University of Melbourne, most of whom were former IMO participants, and trained them for the ACM Universities computer programming computetition, where his team came 6th of 54 teams, representing the cream of North American and other international universities.

When the Australian Mathematics Trust decided to develop a program to enter students in the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), in 1998, Ben and colleague Robbie Gates were the two in the forefront of the training program. Ben was the inaugural and still current Director of Training. Initially Robbie Gates was Team Leader but Robbie moved into industry and Ben moved into both roles, having only recently divested half of this to Bernard Blackham.

Ben's program and dedication to success, working with the most talented students, has paid enormous dividends. In the first year, 1999, his program yielded its first Bronze Medals, in 2002 a first Silver Medal and in 2006 Australia won its first IOI Gold Medal, with a further Silver also. In 2007 Australia not only won a further Gold and Silver Medal, but for the first time all four students earned medals emphasising the depth which the program had achieved.

By any measure Australia had become one of the strong countries at IOI, mixing it with the best, despite very little programming being taught in Australian schools. People from other countries are trying to discover the reason for Australia's success. The secret is in fact no secret - it is Ben Burton.

Ben also studied while completing his PhD with William Jaco in Oklahoma, and continued after his PhD to do post doctoral work with Kathy Horadam on information security at RMIT.

In Melbourne he met his partner Umit and enjoys international films and many other cultural and travel interests. He has now finished at RMIT and has a research position in the finance industry, which offers the interesting challenge of combining research mathematics with practical concerns.

Peter Taylor
Friday 13 May 2008