Alfred Jacobus van der Poorten was born in Amsterdam in 1942 and spent the war as ''Fritsje Teerink'', believing himself to be the youngest child of the Teerink family in Amersfoort. His true parents, David and Marianne van der Poorten, were among the few who returned from the camps. His family migrated to Sydney, Australia when he was not quite nine years old. He quickly learned to barrack for St George [The St George Rugby League Football Club benefited from his dedicated attendance at 74 consecutive matches 1954--1957 by proceeding to win the premiership for eleven consecutive years 1956--1966] and, a little later, to support Carlton [The ''Mighty Blues'' hale from Sydney's rival city Melbourne; their game is Australian Rules Football. They won the flag in 1995]. Were it not for [the] commonsense [of his wife Joy], he would quite probably now be a politician.
Alf survived the ministrations of Sydney Boys' High School and, in accepting the bribe of a university cadetship, chose to study mathematics at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, obtaining a BSc with first class honours and a PhD degree. He avoided the compulsory general studies subjects of the science degree by pursuing a concurrent major sequence in philosophy, which he later converted to a BA with honours. Lest his education be totally impractical, he then proceeded to complete an MBA degree. Alf verifies the definition that ''a professor is a person who goes to university and never comes out''; he did not leave UNSW until he took up a chair of mathematics at Macquarie University, in 1979.
During the sixties, Alf was active in student politics. He was president of the Student's Union Council 1964--65 and president of the University Union 1965--1967. Alf was declared ''Young 'refo' of the year'' in 1966 [he received the Australian Youth Citizenship Award ''for his attainments in community service, academic achievement and youth leadership whereby he has set an outstanding example to the community'']. He represented the undergraduates on the Council of the University [its ''Board of Governors''] 1967--1969 and represented the staff [faculty] unions 1969--1973. Alf had joined the board of directors of University Co-operative Bookshop Ltd (a chain of college and university bookshops on the Australian east coast) in 1965 and remained a director until 1982, serving as chair of the board from 1979. He was a member of the federal executive of the Federation of Australian University Staff Associations in the early seventies.
Alf was appointed Lecturer in Mathematics in 1969, promoted to Senior Lecturer 1972 and, after a year's leave spent at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden and at Cambridge, to Associate Professor in 1976. Then in 1979, after a sabbatical leave at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, he moved to Macquarie University as Professor of Mathematics. He was elected Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics and served as Head of School 1980--1987. In the meantime he spent periods at the Université Bordeaux I, at TH Delft, and at MSRI, Berkeley. Alf was a member of the New South Wales Secondary School's Board, and of its Executive, 1983--1987; and for two years, 1986--87, he was Vice-President of Academic Senate (Chairman of the Academic Board). Alf was again elected as Head, now of the renamed School of Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Electronics, in April, 1991, and served as Head until the end of 1996, when he was again elected to chair Macquarie University's Academic Senate; in that capacity he was a member of Macquarie University's Senior Executive and an ex officio member of the University Council until his retirement from administrative activity at the end of 2001. He had been elected to represent the academic staff on the Council of Macquarie University 1986--87, and 1990--96.
Alf spends a lot of time playing with his Macintosh computer. Luckily, he can do that simultaneously with watching football on TV [he's quite unprejudiced and can get equal pleasure from rugby league, Australian rules, American football, soccer or rugby union]. Then there's cricket, baseball, ... . In the interstices he reads science fiction and mysteries. He claims never to have thrown a book away and thus owns some five thousand science fiction books and several thousand mysteries; but he's not really a collector, just a keeper. Mind you, his very extensive mathematical library, concentrating primarily on topics with a number theoretical flavor (that of course includes the theory of functions) is the envy of his many international mathematical visitors.
In real life, Alf is a dedicated research mathematician. He has written some 180 papers and enjoys adding to his United Airlines frequent flyer miles by attending conferences as if there were no tyranny of distance. His current research activity includes work on 'Continued fractions' and 'Effective diophantine approximation'. In 1994--95, Alf chaired a Working Party on behalf of the National Committee for Mathematics to report to the Australian Research Council on "Mathematical Sciences Research and Advanced Mathematical Services in Australia". His fine book Notes on Fermat's Last Theorem was published by Wiley Interscience in January, 1996. Notwithstanding that, it was awarded the Association of American Publishers Professional/Scholarly Publishing Award for Excellence in Mathematics, 1996. In 1998 he was a member of the Canadian National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) site visit committee to evaluate Canada's three national Mathematical Sciences Research Institutes; and in 2003 he was a member of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) review committee for academic research in mathematics. In 1998 Alf joined the new Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematical Union, and was reappointed in 2002 and 2006; he was one of Australia's three delegates to the quadrennial Assembly of the IMU at Dresden (1998), at Beijing (2002), and at Santiago de Compostella (2006).
Alf's contribution to Mathematics was recognised by the award of a Doctorate honoris causa by the Université Bordeaux I in 1998. He was President of the Australian Mathematical Society 1996--98 and was awarded its George Szekeres Medal in recognition of his career research achievements and contribution in 2002. Alf van der Poorten was appointed a Member in the Order of Australia, AM, in the Australia Day Honours List 2004, for "service to mathematical research and education, particularly in the field of number theory".
Home Page alf@math.mq.edu.au : 10/2004