Alfred van der Poorten

He spent a year in Israel and then studied mathematics at the University of New South Wales, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1965, a doctorate in 1968 under the joint supervision of George Szekeres and Kurt Mahler, and a Master of Business Administration.

[1][2][3][5] On finishing his studies in 1969, van der Poorten joined the UNSW faculty as a lecturer in pure mathematics.

In 1979 he moved to Macquarie University to become full professor and head of the School of Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Electronics, an administrative role that he served until 1987 and then resumed from 1991 to 1996.

Some of his significant results include the 1988 solution of Pisot's conjecture on the rationality of Hadamard quotients of rational functions,[8] his 1992 work with Bernard Dwork on the Eisenstein constant,[9] his work with Enrico Bombieri on Diophantine approximation of algebraic numbers, and his 1999 paper with Kenneth Stuart Williams on the Chowla–Selberg formula.

[10] He had many co-authors, the most frequent being his colleague John H. Loxton, who joined the UNSW faculty in 1972 and who later like van der Poorten moved to Macquarie.