Márta Svéd

The native form of this personal name is Svéd Márta. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Márta Svéd
Born
Márta Wachsberger

16 November or 16 December 1910
Kingdom of Hungary
Died30 September 2005(2005-09-30) (aged 94)
South Australia
CitizenshipHungarian
Australian
Alma materRoyal Joseph University
University of Adelaide
Known for
SpouseGeorge Svéd
Children2
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisOn finite linear and Baer structures (1985)

Márta Svéd (née Wachsberger; 16 November or 16 December 1910[a] – 30 September 2005) was a Hungarian mathematician who was a teacher of mathematics at the University of Adelaide after moving to Australia in the 1930s. She was 75 years old when she completed her PhD in 1985. She wrote the textbook Journey into Geometries (1991), and won the BH Neumann Award in 1994 for her contributions to mathematics learning in Australia.

Early life and education

Márta Wachsberger was born in Hungary on 16 November 1910[1] or 16 December 1910 of Jewish parents.[2][3]

She was in the same high school class in Budapest as Esther Klein (later Szekeres).[4][5] She became interested in mathematics through Középiskolai Matematikai Lapok (KöMaL), a Hungarian magazine for high school mathematicians, and through its problem-solving column, where Paul Erdős was also a regular solver.[5][6] She took third place in her year's offering of the Hungarian national high school mathematics competition, ahead of Pál Turán but behind her future husband, George Svéd.[5][7] Due to the restrictions placed on Jews in Hungary in the late 1920s, only two students from their class could study science or mathematics at the university in Budapest; Márta took the mathematics position, and Klein studied physics instead.[4]

Both Márta and George Svéd attended the Royal Joseph University in Budapest.[1][7] They were friends with a group of other young Jewish maths students, including Klein (Márta's best friend from school), her future husband George Szekeres, and Erdős, who used to meet in the Budapest City Park at the Anonymous statue, often discussing mathematical problems.[3]

Career

Svéd and her husband moved to Australia in 1939 and had one son and one daughter. She became the head of the mathematics department at Wilderness School, a private Adelaide high school for girls, and in the same year helped found Australia's first high school mathematics magazine.[5]

Her old friend Klein, meanwhile, had married mathematician George Szekeres and escaped Europe for Shanghai; after World War II, the Szekeres and Svéd families shared a small apartment in Adelaide.[4]

Awards and honours

Svéd won the BH Neumann Award of the Australian Mathematics Trust in 1994. The award citation credited her in particular for the flourishing of mathematics competitions in Australia and the success of Australia in international mathematics competitions.[5]

Personal life

Svéd married engineer George Svéd, and they had a son and a daughter.[7]

Later life, death and legacy

In 1985, Svéd completed a PhD at the University of Adelaide, at age 75.[5][8] Her dissertation, On finite linear and Baer structures, concerned finite geometry, and was supervised by Rey Casse.[5][8] Her 1991 book, Journey into Geometries (MAA Spectrum), has been described by reviewer David A. Thomas as an "Alice-in-Wonderland-type journey into non-Euclidean geometry", written in a conversational style.[9]

Svéd died on 30 September 2005, not long after the death of her friends, George and Esther Szekeres, who died within an hour of each other.[10][11]

Svéd's posthumously-published book Two Lives and a Bonus (Peacock Publications, 2006) documents her early life in Budapest.[12]

The University of Adelaide offers the Márta Svéd Scholarship for women mathematicians.[13]

In fiction

The Svéds' granddaughter is author Miriam Sved,[14] who moved from Sydney to Melbourne in around 2002.[15][16] Her fiction has been published in literary journals such as Meanjin and Overland, and as of March 2026 she has published two novels, Game Day (about Aussie rules football), and the historical novel A Universe of Sufficient Size.[17] The latter, which was shortlisted for the Colin Roderick Award, is a story about a group of Jewish mathematicians in Hungary who flee the country, which she based on stories she had heard from Márta Svéd. While the story is fictional, several characters are loosely based on people in Márta Svéd's circle, in particular her mother's best friend from school, Esther Szekeres (née Klein) and her husband George Szekeres, and the famous mathematician Paul Erdős.[3] Erich Mayer, writing in ArtsHub, gave the book 5 out of 5 stars.[18]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Note conflicting DOBs per two different sources - See Early life and education secion.

References

  1. ^ a b Maroske, Sara (16 September 2025). "Svéd, Márta (1910-2005)". Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation. Swinburne University of Technology. Retrieved 31 July 2025.
  2. ^ "NAA: A435, 1945/4/1153: Naturalisation papers, George Sved". National Archives of Australia. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
  3. ^ a b c Sved, Miriam (2019). "Acknowledgements". A Universe of Sufficient Size. p. 312-313. ISBN 9781743535127.
  4. ^ a b c Cowling, Michael (7 November 2005), "A world of teaching and numbers – times two", The Sydney Morning Herald (obituary of George and Esther Szekeres)
  5. ^ a b c d e f g BH Neumann Award citation, Australian Mathematics Trust, retrieved 6 April 2018
  6. ^ Schechter, Bruce (2000), My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdős, Simon and Schuster, p. 55, ISBN 9780684859804
  7. ^ a b c Howell, P. A. (6 March 2020). "George Svéd". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved 7 March 2026. This article was published: in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 19 , 2021; online in 2020
  8. ^ a b Márta Svéd at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  9. ^ Reviews of Journey into Geometries:
    • Thomas, David A. (November 1992). "Review: [Untitled]". The Mathematics Teacher. 85 (8): 690. JSTOR 27967867.
    • Fenton, William E. (April 1993), "Review: [Untitled]", The American Mathematical Monthly, 100 (4): 411–13, doi:10.2307/2324983, JSTOR 2324983
  10. ^ "Papers 1937–1995 (Sved, G., (George); Sved, Marta.; University of Adelaide. Dept. of Civil Engineering.; 1937-1995)". Adelaide University Library catalogue. Retrieved 7 March 2026. (In-library use only)
  11. ^ Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications, Volumes 46–48, 2006, p. 4, We regret to announce the loss of our three senior ICA members in Australia. George and Esther Szekeres died within an hour of one another, and Marta Sved died two days later. All were in their mid-nineties.
  12. ^ Sved, Marta (2006). Two Lives and a Bonus. Peacock Publications. ISBN 978-1-921008-28-3. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
  13. ^ "Márta Svéd Scholarship supporting women in maths". CSER STEM Professional Learning. 22 August 2025. Retrieved 7 March 2026.
  14. ^ Phillips, Georgia Rose (November 2019). "A Universe of Sufficient Size, Written by Miriam Sved". Historical Novel Society. Retrieved 9 March 2026. Appeared in: HNR Issue 90 (November 2019)
  15. ^ Hardy, Karen (14 August 2014). "Miriam Sved: Game Day novel on the ball". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 4 August 2024. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  16. ^ Sved, Miriam (15 April 2013). "fiction". Overland (magazine). Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  17. ^ "Miriam Sved". Miriam Sved – Author. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  18. ^ Sved, Miriam (25 April 2019). "Book Review: A Universe of Sufficient Size by Miriam Sved". ArtsHub Australia. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
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