Gaven Martin is Distinguished Professor of Mathematics. He is currently Vice President (Physical Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Technology & Engineering) of the Royal Society of New Zealand and currently leads a strong multidisciplinary science institute at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. An undergraduate in New Zealand, PhD at the University of Michigan with subsequent postocs in Berkeley and a Gibbs AProf at Yale. Returning to NZ he split chairs at Australian National University and University of Auckland for a number of years before settling in Auckland.

His many distinctions include Fellowships with Fulbright, Sloan, NSF, ESERC, Swedish & Finnish Academies, IAS (Princeton), IHES (Bur-sur Yvette), Hausdorff (Bonn), Magdalen College (Oxford), IPAM (UCLA), James Cook Fellow (NZ), JSPS (Japan), Fellowship of the American Math. Soc., and the NZ Math. Soc., a Miller Professorship at Berkeley, along with numerous visting professorships. Awarded the Hector Medal (RSNZ)in 2008. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1997.

He is a Board Member of the Rotary National Science Forum and has led significant fundraising efforts for postgraduate science scholarships as well as the support of mathematics in NZ. He has served on the primary science funding agencies within NZ (Marsden, Rutherford, MBIE) on the NSF (USA) and many other international funding agencies.