Emeritus Professor Cheryl E Praeger

Emeritus Professor Cheryl E Praeger is a multiple award-winning professor and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Professor Praeger retired from full-time academia at UWA at the beginning of 2017, following 40 years of dedication to the academic pursuit of mathematical knowledge. She now focuses on research and research supervision in her role as Senior Honorary Research Fellow.

During her prestigious career, Professor Praeger won many distinguished awards, recognising her as one of Australia’s leading mathematicians. Professor Praeger was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1996, and served on its Council as Foreign Secretary. In 1999, she was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for her research and service to mathematics in the country.

Many of Professor Praeger’s awards have marked the first time a woman has won the prize. This includes the 2013 Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal of the Australian Academy of Science, of which she was the first female recipient since the Medal’s establishment in 1935.

Professor Praeger was the first woman President of the Australian Mathematical Society (1992-1994), and the first pure mathematician to win an ARC Federation Fellowship (2007-2012). Another outstanding achievement was being the first mathematician named WA Scientist of the Year in 2009, and being inducted into both the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame and the Western Australian Women's Hall of Fame in 2015.

Throughout her noteworthy career, Professor Praeger has held memberships with the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia, Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, Australian Mathematics Trust, American Mathematical Society, the London Mathematical Society, and was Chair of the Australian Council of Heads of Mathematical Sciences.

Professor Praeger has been heavily involved in the direction of mathematics within Australia, within her roles as a member of the Curriculum Development Council of the Commonwealth Schools Commission, Prime Minister's Science Council, WA Science Advisory Committee, and WISET Advisory Committee to the Federal Minister for Science on participation of women in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Add to this Professor Praeger’s publishing history, where her mathematical work has been featured in more than 400 journal articles, and you arguably have one of the most successful academics in the southern hemisphere.