John Fauvel was born on 21st July 1947, in Glasgow. After attending school at Trinity College, Glenalmond, he obtained a BA in Mathematics at Essex University in 1970 (including a dissertation on Homotopy Theory), an MSc at Warwick University in 1973 (with a dissertation on Algebraic K-Theory), and an MPhil in Mathematics at Warwick University in 1977 (with a dissertation on Fuzzy Theory).
He was a Research Assistant with Glaxo Research Ltd. (1966 and 1967), a Tutor in Mathematics at Warwick University in 1970-73, had visiting appointments in the History of Science, Art and Astronomy at Birmingham Polytechnic (1975-78) and Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1977). He started working for the OU in 1974 as an Associate Lecturer. Following temporary Lectureships in the Institute for Educational Technology (1975) and Staff Tutor posts in the Arts Faculty and Mathematics Faculty (now the Mathematics and Computing Faculty) in 1975-78, he joined the Mathematics Faculty in 1979 as Lecturer in Mathematics with Special Responsibility for the U-area.
He served on the Course Teams for A381, Science and belief: from Darwin to Einstein, AM289, History of mathematics, U202, Inquiry, MA290, Topics in the history of mathematics, and more recently on the Mathematics entry suite (particularly MU120, Open mathematics). He was an organiser and presenter of a number of programmes in a radio series Mathematics Miscellany in the 1990s.
In 1998 he was the New Zealand Mathematical Society's Visiting Lecturer for 1998; in 1999 he gave an MAA invited lecture, on the subject of 'The history of mathematics and its future', at the Joint Mathematical Meetings of the MAA and AMS, Baltimore, USA, and was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor of mathematics at Colorado College, Colorado Springs, USA; and in March 2000 was Huffman Scholar in Residence at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA.
The History of Mathematics Research group at the Open University is one of the largest and most active in the world. Its members (June Barrow-Green, John Fauvel, Jeremy Gray and Robin Wilson) work on a number of overlapping areas. John’s recent research reached back into the 17th Century for his study of Newton’s mathematical language, a pioneering study of mathematics, language and symbolism in the work of Isaac Newton. He had recently co-edited (with Robin Wilson) a book Oxford figures: 800 years of mathematical science, to which he had contributed 3 chapters, on 800 years of mathematics traditions, Georgian Oxford and James Joseph Sylvester. Recently his PhD student Jackie Stedall completed her thesis on The algebra of John Wallis, and was awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
John was involved in the social history of mathematics in the UK, and in the relations between history of mathematics and mathematics education. He was particularly interested in British mathematical developments of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. He believed strongly in the benefits of research in the history of mathematics for the teaching of the subject. From 1994 to 1998 John was a member of the executive committee of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics.
He was president of the British Society for the History of Mathematics from 1991-1994, and had edited its Newsletter since 1995. He organised or co-organised 29 conferences for the BSHM since 1990, notably several of the annual HIMED (History in Mathematics Education) meetings and several of the RiP (Research in Progress) meetings for research students to meet and discuss their work. Among the campaigns he was prominent in on behalf of the BSHM were the campaign to prevent the destruction of the grave of J. J. Sylvester and its conversion into a north London car-park, and the campaign of protest against the University of Keele’s ‘secret disposal’ of the famous Turner Collection of historical mathematical texts to a second-hand book-seller.
John was chair of HPM (the International Study Group on the Relations between History and Pedagogy of Mathematics, affiliated to the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction) from 1992 to 1996, co-organised several of its international conferences, and co-chaired the ICMI Study on The role of the history of mathematics in the teaching and learning of mathematics, which was recently published as History in the mathematics classroom by Kluwer 2000.
John was also on the editorial board of a number of journals in the area of mathematics, education, history and cultural studies, including Science and Education, For the Learning of Mathematics, Themes, Paradigm and Radical Philosophy.
He enjoyed cooking, and edited Simple Scoff: a Cookbook in 1972; he also indexed a companion volume Seasonal Scoff in 1977. At Essex University he was President of the Music Society, Chairman of the Subscription Concerts Committee, and founding President of the Mathematics Society. He played the violin, recorder, pianola and clavichord.
David Brannan
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