Born Adelaide 04 October 1925

Died Adelaide 09 August 2005

Ren Potts, one of Australia's most inspirational mathematicians in recent decades, was educated at Rose Park Primary School and Prince Alfred College before studying at the University of Adelaide from 1943 to 1947, when he graduated with first class honours in mathematics.

In 1948 he was the Rhodes Scholar for South Australia and went to Oxford University, where he was at Queen's College and graduated with a D Phil, researching Mathematical Physics. This earlier work included the development of what became the Potts Model, a significant cornerstone of statistical mechanics. However ren soon moved his interests to being one of the real founders of operations Research, and the Potts Model's citations, etc were to come only 20 years later, well after he had changed fields. His contribution to Operations research, and developing it is a significant mathematical discipline were significant, not only with research, but also in considerable application in improving traffic flow in cities in the US and Australia, and many related applications.

By 1959 Ren was appointed as a Professor of Applied mathematics at the University of Adelaide, holding one of the University's four named Elder Chairs until his retirement in 1990. These were truly golden years for mathematics at Adelaide, with Adelaide having consistently one of the highest outputs of graduate students in Australia during this time.

The atmosphere in the department during this time was highly conducive to quality research and the morale was very high. Ren's research group was certainly one of the largest with over 15 doctoral students at times. Ren took not only a personal interest in the progress of all students in the department, but also monitored all the undergraduate classes, visiting them from time to time to extol the virtues of continuing their studies and the excellent job prospects.

During most of his life Ren was an active sportsman. Not only had he been a fine athlete during his undergraduate days but through his working life he pursued a number of sports vigorously, usually until injusries took their toll. These sports included hockey, squash, badminton, marathon running and swimming. He also took a leading role in running the Adelaide University Sports Association and was often a successive active lobbysist in improving the facilities available to students.

Ren played an active role in organising ICME-5 in Adelaide, which attracted several thousand mathematics educators from around the world, and his plenary speech at that conference was a memorable example of his considerable oratory skills.

In Canberra in 1988, Australia hosted for the first time the International Mathematical Olympiad, the largest held to that time, with many Asian countries participating for the first time. Ren chaired the steering committee and also the Jury, a highly challenging job which he handled with considerable skill.

Ren recieved a number of national honours including Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1991 for "service to Australian society and science in operations research". He was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences (FAA) in 1975 and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE) in 1983, one of the few to be Fellow of both Academies.

He was active in founding ANZIAM (the Applied Mathematics division of the Australian Mathematical Society) and the Australian Computer Society and won the inaugural medal of ANZIAM in 1995.

In recent years he became active in Keith Hamann's Saturday morning enrichment group in Adelaide, improving the problem solving skills of many of Adelaide's most talented students. During this time this group has produced a number of IMO medallists, including Justin Ghan, Ross Atkins and Konrad Pilch. Justin and Ross continued also while living in Adelaide to work with the students and Konrad is still eligible while at school for another year for further IMO selection.

Ren is survived by his wife Barbara (Dr Barbara Kidman, a Computer Scientist), whom he married in Oxford in 1950, and two daughters Linda and Rebecca.

Peter Taylor
September 2005
(With acknowledgement to material published in the Adelaide Advertiser for some details.)