Bruce Henry, Australia

Posted Tuesday 08 July 2008

Bruce Henry receives his Erdös Award from ICMI President Michèle Artigue and WFNMC President Petar Kenderov at ICME-11, Monterrey, Mexico, on 08 July 2008.

Citation

Bruce Henry is now retired from an academic post at Deakin University in Melbourne, where over many years he trained many of the teachers now serving in his state of Victoria. He holds a BSc and DipEd at the University of Melbourne and MScEd from the University of Western Australia.

His key role and exceptional achievement was in founding in 1991 the Mathematics Challenge for Young Australians, an enrichment program supported by the Australian Government and attracting about 23,000 students annually. The program has three stages. The first stage is a problem solving event in which students between Years 5 and 10 have three weeks to solve a number of problems, which develop from elementary ideas and can develop to quite advanced ideas in steps.

The second stage, known as the Enrichment stage, comprises formal coursework extending students' skills and knowledge beyond classroom experience, particularly exploring mathematical concepts such as proof, and also extending knowledge in traditional mathematics disciplines and extending problem solving expertise. This stage attracts entries from other countries in Australia's region. The third and final stage is a national Olympiad for students up to Year 10. Bruce remained as Director of this program until recently.

Bruce has also made major and significant contributions to mathematics learning for over 30 years in his state of Victoria both with curriculum input and as an official examiner, including Chief Examiner. He has also written more than 40 books for teachers and students. He is also a prolific problem composer and lectures on exploratory mathematics related to problem solving.