An extraordinary end to a remarkable life

Acclaimed mathematician and UNSW Emeritus Professor George Szekeres FAA OM, passed away last week at the age of 95.

Married for nearly 70 years, both George and Esther were mathematicians who first met as students at the Technological University of Budapest in Hungary.

George worked for six years as an analytical chemist in Budapest before taking up a post as a leather chemist in Shanghai to escape the threat of Nazi persecution. The factory closed a year later, and the Szekeres family were part of the community of 15,000 Jewish refugees from Central Europe in Shanghai. There they lived through the rigours of WWII, the Japanese occupation, and the beginnings of the Chinese Communist revolution.

“George and Esther were wonderful people who contributed richly to Australia for over 50 years. We are diminished by their passing,” said Professor Cowling. George and Esther at Government House where George received his award of Member of the Order of Australia in 2002.

Offered a post as lecturer at the University of Adelaide, George arrived in Australia in 1948 with Esther and their young son Peter. Their daughter Judith was born a few years later.

George was appointed Foundation Professor of Pure Mathematics at UNSW in 1963. Under his leadership, the new Department of Pure Mathematics earned national and international recognition. After he retired in 1975 he continued to work most of the week, up until last year when he and Esther returned to live in Adelaide.

“George was almost without peer: a famous, self-made mathematician," says Michael Cowling, Head of the School of Mathematics at UNSW. “His work broke new ground in an unusually broad range of fields of mathematics. One of his most famous and far-sighted papers provided a key mathematical tool for understanding ‘black holes’ in cosmology theory.”

“George and Esther were wonderful people who contributed richly to Australia for over 50 years. We are diminished by their passing,” said Professor Cowling.

Professor George Szekeres at his farewell party at UNSW last year