Esther Szekeres

Esther Szekeres ( born Esther Klein, born February 20, 1910 in Budapest, † August 28 2005 in Adelaide ) was a Hungarian- Australian mathematician. She was married to George Szekeres and is known for the Happy Ending theorem from combinatorics.

Esther Szekeres studied physics in Budapest on one of the few women at that time accessible places ( the place of study in mathematics took her friend Marta Sved true). She belonged to a circle of friends mathematically interested students to Paul Erdős ( with which they published ) and Paul Turan, where she also her future husband George Szekeres ( Marriage 1937) met, who studied chemistry at the time. A conjecture of her was proved by George Szekeres, and since both were married later she received the name Happy Ending Theorem. It states that under five points in general position in the plane there are four points that form a convex quadrilateral.

The Szekeres as Jews fled from the Nazis to Shanghai ( where their son Peter was born ) and later (1948 ) to Australia. There she lived with her husband in 1964 in Sydney, where he was a professor at the University of New South Wales, and most recently in Adelaide near their children. From 1983 to 2002 she taught regularly mathematically talented high school students from the area of ​​Sydney in special remedial courses.

She taught mathematics for many years at Macquarie University, whose honorary doctorate she received in 1990.

She had with George Szekeres a son and a daughter. George and Esther Szekeres died in quick succession in 2005.