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Australian Academy of Science fellows

Twenty of Australia’s leading scientists were honoured on 25 March by election to the Aus-tralian Academy of Science, see http://www.science.org.au/academy/fellows/2005.

htm . Among the new fellows are AustMS members Michael G. Eastwood (University ofAdelaide), Jorgen S. Frederiksen (CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Victoria), Amnon Neeman(Australian National University) and Hugh Ph. Possingham (University of Queensland).

Michael Eastwood was born in Cumbria and grewup near Manchester in England. He read Mathe-matics at Hertford College, Oxford and obtained hisPhD from Princeton University in 1976. Most of thenext several years were spent in Oxford working withRoger Penrose and his school. He moved to Adelaidein 1985 where he is currently a Professor and SeniorResearch Fellow of the Australian Research Council.Much of his work is concerned with geometry andsymmetry.

Jorgen Frederiksen completed his undergraduatestudies at the University of Adelaide in mathematicalphysics and his PhD in theoretical physics in 1972 atthe Australian National University and was awardedthe Peter William Stroud Prize. Since 1974 he hasworked for CSIRO Atmospheric Research where he iscurrently Chief Research Scientist. He was awardedthe CSIRO David Rivett Medal (1984), a CrafoordFellowship by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sci-ences (1983) and a DSc by the University of Ade-laide (1988) for his work in atmospheric dynamicsand theoretical physics. He has held positions asvisiting scientist in The Netherlands, Sweden andthe USA and as program leader and deputy direc-tor of the Cooperative Research Centre for South-ern Hemisphere Meteorology. His work has con-tributed to the fundamental understanding of atmo-spheric processes determining weather and climateand their predictability, including the structures ofstorm tracks, blocking, teleconnection patterns, in-traseasonal oscillations and equatorial waves, and thestatistical dynamics of turbulence.

102 AAS Fellows

Amnon Neeman received his BSc and MSc from theUniversity of Sydney in 1979 and his PhD from Har-vard University in 1983. He was a fellow at the In-stitute for Advanced Studies (Princeton) in 1983–84,then taught at Princeton University 1984–87, theUniversity of Virginia 1987–1998, and has been atthe Australian National University since early 1999.He has worked in algebraic geometry, algebraic K-theory, homological algebra and topology.

Hugh Possingham completed Applied MathematicsHonours at the University of Adelaide in 1984 anda doctorate at Oxford University in 1987 (Rhodesscholarship). Postdoctoral research followed at Stan-ford University and the Australian National Univer-sity (QEII Fellow). In 1991 he took a Lectureshipin the Department of Applied Mathematics, and by1995 was Professor and Foundation Chair of the De-partment of Environmental Science at the Univer-sity of Adelaide. In July 2000 he became Profes-sor of Mathematics and Ecology at the Universityof Queensland where he is currently an ARC Pro-fessorial Research Fellow and Director of The Ecol-ogy Centre. Hugh plays public roles as chair of theFederal government’s Biological Diversity AdvisoryCommittee and member of The Wentworth Group.He has been awarded the POL Eureka Prize for Envi-ronmental Research (1999), the Australian Academyof Science’s inaugural Fenner Medal (2000) and theAustralian Mathematical Society Medal (2001).