Bulletin

Issue: July 2005

People

‘Lord of the Lattices’ speaks about maths

Professor George Grätzer – one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians and researchers in lattice theory and universal algebra – recently visited La Trobe University’s Institute for Advanced Study.

At La Trobe, Professor Grätzer worked with Dr Brian Davey, Associate Professor in Mathematics, who runs one of Australia’s leading centres for this type of advanced mathematics research. The La Trobe centre regularly attracts prominent mathematicians from Oxford University and other key European and American universities.

The fields of lattice theory and algebra play critical roles in the information age – in computer science and engineering. They are used for programming languages and data mining, as well as in other areas of mathematics, such as number theory and group theory.

Professor Grätzer is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Born in Hungary, he has lived and worked in North America since 1963.

He has published 18 books, including six on LaTeX – a computer programming language for typesetting mathematical papers and textbooks used by almost every mathematician in the world – and more than 200 research papers. He is also founder and Editor in Chief of the journal Algebra Universalis, first published in 1970.

Professor Grätzer’s most famous work established an important link between lattices and universal algebra. With life-long collaborator, Tamás Schmidt, he proved a theorem, now known as the Grätzer-Schmidt Theorem, that underpins this field of knowledge.

The research group he established at the University of Manitoba in 1966 remains one of the international focal points for research in lattice theory and universal algebra. Among the graduate students in Professor Grätzer’s group at the University of Manitoba was La Trobe’s Dr Davey, who obtained his PhD in 1975 under his supervision. Dr Davey therefore describes Professor Grätzer as the ‘mathematical grandfather’ of his own students at La Trobe, who had a chance to meet and work with Professor Grätzer during his two months stay at La Trobe.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Foreign Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Professor Grätzer was also awarded an honorary doctorate by La Trobe during his visit, in recognition of his work and links with the University.

At this ceremony, Professor Grätzer gave a public lecture, titled: Should we Convey Mathematical Ideas in Publications?

The answer, he says, is a unanimous ‘yes’. But he argues while mathematicians, as a rule, are very good at conveying mathematical ideas in person, in publications they confine themselves to a ‘skeleton’ of definitions, theorems and proofs.

This is an issue he covers in his next book – how to write about mathematics the way we talk about it – to help mathematicians reach wider audiences.

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