Cheryl Praeger

Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger is an Australian mathematician. Praeger received BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Queensland (1974), and a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1973 under direction of Peter M. Neumann. She has published widely and has advised 27 PhD students (as of March 2018). , she is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. She is best known for her works in group theory, algebraic graph theory and combinatorial designs.

Early life and education Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger was born in Toowoomba, Queensland.

She completed her high school education at Brisbane Girls Grammar School. After graduating high school, Praeger went to the government vocational guidance section to inquire about how she could further study mathematics. The vocational guidance officer she spoke with tried to discourage her from studying mathematics further, suggesting she become a teacher or a nurse because two other girls who came to him wanting to study maths were not able to pass their courses. and ARC Federation Fellow in 2009.

Praeger has supervised over 30 graduate students and in 1997 she supervised the Honours research work of Akshay Venkatesh who went on to win a 2018 Fields Medal, commonly regarded as the highest prize in mathematics.

During her career, Praeger has been invited to speak at many conferences, including ones in Croatia, Canada, China, US, UK, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Slovakia, Serbia, Hong Kong, Morocco, Slovakia, Slovenia, France, Germany, Greece, USSR, Belgium, Iran, Italy, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Japan. Honorary Doctor of Science from the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand (1993) Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1996) Member of the Order of Australia for her service to mathematics in Australia, especially through research and professional associations (1999). Centenary Medal of the Australian Government (2003) Moyal Medal of Macquarie University, Australia (2011; the first female recipient of the Medal since its establishment in 2000) 2011 Euler Medal of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (presented in 2017) Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (2012) Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal of the Australian Academy of Science (2013; the first female recipient of the Medal since its establishment in 1935) George Szekeres Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society (2014; the first female recipient of the Medal since its establishment in 2002) Honorary Member of the London Mathematical Society (2014) Honorary doctorate in Mathematics Education by Yazd University, Iran (2015) Mehdi Behzad Prize of the Iranian Mathematical Society, for management in mathematics (2015) Honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland (2015) Inducted into the Western Australian Science Hall of Fame (2015). Inducted into the Western Australian Women's Hall of Fame (2015) Honorary Doctor of Mathematics from the University of Queensland, Australia (2017) Honorary Doctor from the University of Primorska, Slovenia (2018) Prime Minister's Prize for Science (2019). Kirk Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge (2020) Companion of the Order of Australia for "eminent service to mathematics, and to tertiary education, as a leading academic and researcher, to international organisations, and as a champion of women in STEM careers". This is Australia's highest civic honour. (2021) Inaugural Ruby Payne-Scott Medal and Lecture of the Australian Academy of Science (2021). Appointed a Fellow of the International Science Council (2023) Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications (2024)

Since 2014, the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group of the Australian Mathematical Society bestows the Cheryl E. Praeger Travel Awards to female mathematicians. Since 2017 the Australian Mathematics Trust has awarded the Cheryl Praeger Medal to the best performing female contestants in the Australian Mathematics Competition.

Praeger has also held memberships with the Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia, Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, Australian Mathematics Trust, American Mathematical Society, and the London Mathematical Society. Her past affiliations have not been limited to academia.

Other activities Praeger has been a member of the Curriculum Development Council of the Commonwealth Schools Commission, the Prime Ministers Science Advisory Council, WISET Advisory Committee to the Federal Minister for Science on participation of women in Science, Engineering, and Technology, UWA Academy of Young Mathematicians Lectures, the Western Australian School Mathematics Enrichment Course Tutor, and Data Analysis Australia Pty Ltd. She has also served on the Australian Federation of University Women (Western Australian Branch) and the Nedlands Primary School Council.

Between 2007 and 2014 Praeger was a member of the executive committee of the International Mathematical Union and between 2013 and 2016 a vice president of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction.

Between 2014 and 2018 Praeger was foreign secretary of the Australian Academy of Science. She was elected as a Member-at-Large of the executive board of the Association of Academies and Societies of Sciences in Asia (AASSA) for 2016–18 and accepted an invitation to chair the AASSA Committee of Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). She was a Member of the executive committee of the Inter Academy Partnership - Science, 2017–19. Between 2019 and 2022 she was a member of the Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science of the International Science Council.

Praeger promotes the involvement of women in mathematics by encouraging girls in primary and secondary schools with lectures, workshops, conferences and through the Family Maths Program Australia (FAMPA), which she was key in implementing in local primary schools. She is a past Patron of the Mathematical Association of Western Australia.

Personal life In August 1975 Praeger married John Henstridge in Brisbane. They have two children. This was an early application of the classification of finite simple groups. With Jan Saxl and Martin Liebeck, she has co-authored papers on many topics including: permutation groups, primitive permutation groups, simple groups, and almost simple groups. Together they co-authored "On the O'Nan Scott Theorem for primitive permutation groups". It pertains to the classification of finite simple groups, namely the classification of finite primitive permutation groups. The paper contains a complete self-contained proof of the theorem. Praeger later went on to generalise the O'Nan–Scott Theorem to quasiprimitive groups.

Praeger introduced normal quotients of graphs which allows the finite simple groups classification to be applied to analyse symmetric graphs and edge-transitive graphs as well as Cayley graphs. It is now a standard tool in algebraic graph theory. With Peter M Neumann she developed and analysed the first randomised algorithm to recognise finite special linear groups. This led to the international matrix group recognition project and was extended to all finite classical groups by Praeger and Alice Niemeyer. She has co-authored several papers on symmetric graphs and distance-transitive graphs with Tony Gardiner.

Selected publications with Martin Liebeck, Jan Saxl: The maximal factorizations of the finite simple groups and their automorphism groups, American Mathematical Society 1990 with Leonard Soicher: Low rank representations and graphs for sporadic groups, Cambridge University Press 1997 with Jason Fulman, Peter Neumann: A generating function approach to the enumeration of matrices in classical groups over finite fields, American Mathematical Society 2005 with Martin Liebeck, Jan Saxl: Regular subgroups of primitive permutation groups, American Mathematical Society 2010 with Csaba Schneider: Permutation Groups and Cartesian Decompositions, Cambridge University Press 2018