Ian Sloan

Ian Hugh Sloan (born 17 June 1938) is an Australian applied mathematician.

Early life Sloan was born on 17 June, 1938, in Melbourne, Australia. His father, originally trained as a civil engineer, became a senior mathematics teacher and housemaster at Scotch College, Melbourne after losing his job during the Great Depression. Sloan has an older brother, Charles. At age 6, his father was appointed as Principal of Ballarat College, and so he moved from Scotch College to Ballarat College, where he spent most of his school years.

After attending Scotch College and Ballarat College, He subsequently earned a Master of Science (MSc) in mathematical physics from the University of Adelaide.

Career In 1964, Sloan returned to Australia and subsequently joined the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1965 as Lecturer. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1968, Associate Professor in 1973 and then to Scientia Professor in 1999. He was appointed to Personal Chair in Mathematics in 1983 before serving as the Head of the School of Mathematics from 1986 to 1990 and from 1992 to 1993. He is now an Emeritus and part-time professor at UNSW.

He has had many visiting positions including at Cornell University, Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematics and Physics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Mittag-Leffler Institute, Isaac Newton Institute, Polytechnic University of Milan, TU Wien, University of Bath, University of Stuttgart, Weierstrass Institute and the University of Maryland, where he completed two sabbaticals.

Between 1998 and 2000, he served as the President of the Australian Mathematical Society.

Personal life Sloan is married to Jan Sloan, who he met while studying at the University of Melbourne. They have two children, a daughter and a son. In 1997, he was awarded the ANZIAM Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society. In 2001, he was awarded the Australian Academy of Science's Thomas Ranken Lyle Medal. In 2001, he was awarded the Centenary Medal "for service to Australian society and science mathematics" In 2002, he shared the inaugural George Szekeres Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society with Alf van der Poorten of Macquarie University. In the June 2008 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for "service to education through the study of mathematics, particularly in the field of computational mathematics, as an academic, researcher and mentor, and to a range of national and international professional associations." In 2009, he became Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics In 2018, he received an Honorary Doctorate from UNSW.