Fellow

Richard Peirce Brent

(Foreign Fellow, )

Richard Peirce Brent was born in 1946, Melbourne, Australia; son of Oscar R. P. Brent and Nancy E. M. Brent.

He studied  at Melbourne  Grammar School, Monash University  (Australia), and Stanford  University  (USA); 1968 BSc Monash Honours 1 in Mathematics; 1970 MSc Stanford  in Computer Science; 1971 PhD  Stanford  in Computer Science; 1981 DSc Monash in Computer Science; 1998 MA Oxon (by special resolution).

His Research interests are Analysis of algorithms, combinatorics, computational complexity, number theory, numerical analysis, parallel computing, randomised algorithms, random number generators.

In 1968 he was Teaching  Fellow, Computer Centre,  Monash University; 1971 Research Employee, IBM Research Center,  Yorktown Heights, USA; 1972 Research Fellow, Computer Centre, Australian National  University  (ANU); 1973 Fellow, Computer Centre,  ANU; 1976 Senior Fellow, Computer Centre/Computing Research  Group,  ANU; 1978 Foundation Professor  and Head of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, ANU; 1983 Professor,  Centre  for Mathematical Analysis, ANU; 1985 Professor and Head, Computer Sciences Laboratory, ANU; 1998 Statutory Professor  of Computing Science and Fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, UK; 2005 ARC Federation Fellow, MSI & RSISE, Australian National University; 2010 Distinguished Professor, MSI & CECS,  Australian National  University; 2011 Emeritus Professor, Australian National  University.

Prof. Brent was 1975 Visiting Assistant Professor,  Computer Science, Stanford  University (3 months); 1978 Visiting Professor, EECS, University of California,  Berkeley (3 months); 1989 Visiting Professor, Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University (2 months); 1997 Visiting Professor,  Mathematics, Harvard University (2 months); 2005–2011 Visiting Professor, University of Oxford, UK (short visits); 2014–2017 Vice-Chancellor’s Visiting Fellow, University of Newcastle, NSW; 2011–2021 Conjoint Professor,  Mathematics, University  of Newcastle,  NSW.

He was awarded 1963 BHP  Prize, Victoria; 1984 Australian Mathematical Society Medal; 1990 Forsythe Memorial Lecturer,  Stanford  University; 2000 IEEE  Millennium  Medal; 2005 Hannan  Medal of the Australian Academy  of Science; 2014 Moyal Lecturer  and Medallist,  Macquarie  University; 2015 Golub Memorial Lecturer,  Hong Kong Baptist University.

Prof. Brent is the author of two books and over 270 papers, many in refereed journals.  Only the books are listed here. A complete list is available at https://maths-people.anu.edu.au/~brent/pub/pubsall.html.

R. P. Brent, Algorithms for Minimization without Derivatives, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1973, 195 pp.  Reprinted by Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 2002.  R. P. Brent and P. Zimmermann, Modern Computer Arithmetic, Cambridge University  Press, Nov. 2010, 236 pp. Brent’s  publications have over 18, 000 citations on Google Scholar.

Brent has supervised 21 PhD students at the Australian National University, Oxford University, and the University of Newcastle.  Details are available at https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu.

In 1982 he became Fellow, Australian Academy  of Science;  1991 Fellow, Institute of Electrical  and Electronics  Engineers,  USA (Life Fellow, 2011); 1993 Fellow, Institution of Engineers, Australia (resigned  1998); 1995 Fellow, Association  for Computing Machinery,  USA (resigned  2013); 1997 Fellow, Australian Mathematical Society; 2002 Fellow, British  Computer Society (resigned  2008) 2003 Fellow, Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, UK;  2009 Fellow, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, USA; 2009 Foreign  Fellow, Bangladesh  Academy  of Science; 2019 Distinguished Fellow of the International Engineering  and Technology  Institute.