She was warned away from mathematics by school career advisers because ‘girls don’t pass’. Thankfully, Professor Cheryl Praeger ignored this advice, and went on to become the most highly cited pure mathematician in Australia.
Cheryl was drawn to mathematics from an early age. With a natural analytical aptitude, she would frequently finish her school work early before going on to tutor her fellow classmates with theirs. When the time came to decide what to study at university, Cheryl was discouraged from mathematics by the careers service despite her obvious talents in the subject – however, she remained undeterred, and with the encouragement of her mother enrolled at the University of Queensland. She published her first paper in an international journal while still an undergraduate, and continued to achieve her master’s degree, followed by a doctoral degree on the topic of permutation groups at Oxford University in 1974.
Fast forward three decades, and Cheryl has published over 250 research articles and several books. She was the only female professor of mathematics at the University of Western Australia during her professorship, and has since progressed through various roles in her time there, including deputy dean of the engineering, computing and mathematics faculty, and Australian Research Council professorial fellow. Cheryl has continued to specialise in permutation groups (i.e. groups of permutations, or ways of rearranging an ordered collection of elements) following her doctoral degree in the subject, with important applications towards the use of group theory in chemistry and physics, and has since authored a number of papers on design theory and its relationship to fields such as agriculture and fabric weaving. She has spoken about her research as a key-note lecturer in mathematics at conferences worldwide.
Cheryl is also an active advocate for maths education and the involvement of women in mathematics. She was an integral founding contributor to the Family Maths Programme Australia, where she has promoted mathematics vigorously in workshops to pupils in primary and secondary schools across the country.
Cheryl is a fellow of both the Australian Academy of Science and the American Mathematical Society. She is a recipient of the Australian Government centenary medal, and in 1999 was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for her services to mathematics. In reaching the top in the field of mathematics Cheryl has shown women all over the world that, contrary to the beliefs of her high school career advisor, girls absolutely do pass.
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