There are many women in the north of Australia who have distinguished themselves in science. An area which is often regarded as a science support area is that of mathematics.
Professor Anne Street is one of Australia's foremost mathematicians. She has worked since 1967 at the University of Queensland and she was only the second female maths professor in Australia when appointed to a chair in 1985.
Many students have been privileged to experience her very approachable style, although since 1991 this has been restriaed to postgraduate teaching only, when she received an Australian Senior Research fellowship. Now she spends her time on research, supervision of post-graduates and, of course, committee work.
Her speciality is combinatorics, studying designs where one starts with a finite set of objects and select from it subsets with specified properties. These structures are used to develop experimental designs for use in statistical studies in medicine, industry and agriculture, in the construction of codes for automatically correcting errors that occur in transmission of information within a computer, and in constructing access schemes for computer security.
Professor Street works primarily on the pure maths involved in this area, although she is very interested in the applications to which the maths is put. She is currently working with Professor Jennifer Seberry at the University of Wollongong on access schemes.
Professor Street is a senior research fellow with the Australian Research Council, and has recently been the recipient of the Bernhard H. Neumann Award for excellence in her field. She won the award for eleven years of work on the problems committee of the Australian Mathematics Competition, which produces the questions. She considers the mathematics competitions are important, and is therefore particularly delighted with the award. 1n I993, 516,000 people entered the compevtion, representing thirty-five percent of secondary school students.
Anne attended an all girls school in Melbourne, and good maths and chemistry teachers encouraged her. As well, her father was a medical researcher, so she came from a scientific background. While doing her BSc at the University of Melbourne she lived in an all women's college, and she found the company of other women very supportive. Initially she pursued a masters in science, and it was not until her PhD that she chose mathematics.
Anne feels that a very important factor in her success is the support of her husband, a chemist, which has enabled her to combine work and family. She feels another essential is good child care. Her daughter is now a statistician at the University of NSW.
Professor Street's commitment to Australia's future is considerable, as can be measured by her long involvement in the national mathematics competition. She is involved in a very interesvng new area of mathematics and has been pioneering female representation in this field. A very significant northern woman.