from the ANU Reporter, Vol 27, # 1, 31 Jan, 1996, article by Bruce Juddery.

The ANU's late Professor Hanna Neumann will be remembered through an Australian Research Council (ARC) award, if a proposal of the Australian Academy of Science is taken up by the ARC.

A working committee of the academy's National Commmittee for Mathematics suggests the creation of a two-year Hanna Neumann Postdoctoral Fellowship to "provide a role model for female mathematical scientists" in a report "Mathematical Sciences: Adding to Australia", prepared for the National Board of Employment, Education and Training (NBEET).

The report identifies "gender structure" as one of the difficulties facing the discipline. Others include an aging profile of its practitioners.

But university staff responding to the review did not favour "affirmative action" to redress the balance. "On the other hand, there was general agreement that more could be done to encourage talented female students to continue with their studies, and to retain these students once they were employed."

As part of this process, the ARC was urged to set up a postdoctoral award that "might be called the Hanna Neumann Postdoctoral Fellowship". Hanna Neumann died in 1971 and is commemorated on campus by a building in The Faculties.