The Royal Society of New South Wales is delighted to announce the appointment of Emeritus Professor Ian Sloan AO DistFRSN FAA as the 19th Distinguished Fellow of the Society. The honour of Distinguished Fellow is awarded to internationally-distinguished contributors to science, art, literature, or philosophy, with the number of Distinguished Fellows being limited to 25 at any time.

Ian Sloan is a Melbourne-born mathematician and physicist. He was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide and received a PhD in theoretical atomic physics from University College London. After a short period in industry, he joined the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney). Subsequently, he was appointed to a Personal Chair in Mathematics, served as Head of the School of Mathematics and Chair of the National Committee for Mathematics, and was appointed a Scientia Professor.

He began his research career in theoretical atomic and nuclear physics but later switched to computational mathematics, see “A fortunate scientific life” (pp. 19–26). In all, he has published more than 300 papers in theoretical physics and computational mathematics, with research recognised by the Lyle Medal of the Australian Academy of Science, the Szekeres Medal of the Australian Mathematical Society, the ANZIAM Medal, and the Information Based Complexity Prize. He is a Fellow of the Australian and American Mathematical Societies and the (US) Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

He has served as President of the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Australian Mathematical Society, and the Royal Society of New South Wales. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1983, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 2014, and in 2018 was appointed an Honorary Doctor of the University by UNSW Sydney. In 2008 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia “for service to education through the study of mathematics, particularly in the field of computational mathematics, as an academic, researcher, and mentor, and to a range of national and international professional associations”.