Mathematician Eamonn O’Brien has spent most of his career immersed in the abstract algebra of group theory. It comes as a surprise when others find applications for his work that he hadn’t foreseen, often several years after he has published the research.

“I’m lucky in that my work has been picked up,” says O’Brien, who recently became a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Auckland. “It’s used by people but not in the way intended by me. The work was very much intended to answer particular questions in maths, but it forms part of the basic infrastructure of computational algebra systems. So it tends to be used by number theorists and others as part of unrelated computations they are performing, but really without being obvious to them.”

O’Brien completed a PhD in mathematics at ANU in 1988. After a stint at Marquette University in Wisconsin, he returned to ANU as a Research Fellow in 1990. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in Germany from 1995 before taking up a position at Auckland University in 1997. He is concerned about the exodus of students from high school maths, saying governments need to direct more resources at teacher training and salaries. And maths has an image problem. “We need to dispel the notion that maths is very hard and is only for certain kinds of people,” he says.

He says mathematicians have to communicate their subject better, informing the community of its wide applications. “Many of the widely used accessories in the community – the world wide web, digital data transmission, DVD players, pay TV, credit cards – all make extensive use of maths. The mathematics community is not always good at making people understand this.” However, he remains optimistic about the future. “We’re still getting some high quality students coming in, and we need to ensure that we convey to them some of the excitement of mathematics.”