John Fauvel, who has died at the age of 53, was one of the Open University's great teachers. By his talent, intelligence, and selfless modesty, he made a major contribution to the revival of interest and development of resources in the history of mathematics, not just in the United Kingdom but internationally.
He was a person of great sensitivity, with a rare ability to know how students would respond, so that in his hands teaching at a distance became much more of a conversation. This gift was particularly well displayed in the current course on the history of mathematics, which has become the benchmark across the country. John’s great innovation in that course was to break with a long tradition of loading students up with well-attested facts and to engage them directly in the business of becoming an historian. Right from the start students are asked to reflect on what they are doing as fledgling historians, and while doing so they are helped to read a variety of sources in the same sensitive way that John had. Research historians regularly urge a fresh reading of texts that is alert to what they actually say, and not to what they are popularly supposed to say. That was always John's way, and he successfully pioneered the high-level teaching of the history of mathematics in that spirit.
John also edited five books which are among the most instructive and enjoyable in the subject (one even made it to the ill-fated Dome). They display his sensitivity to texts, which he could open up and make speak again, as well as to pictures, for which he had a fine eye. He combined a gentleness of spirit with a forthright defence in matters of principle, most recently seen in his hard-hitting, analytic and beautifully argued writings castigating the action of Keele University for the way they disposed of the Turner collection of rare mathematical texts. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of John was that there was no gap between what he was and how he thought and taught. He was a remarkably whole person, and very much his own person, capable of creating so much that was original because it was in him and of him.
His work for the British Society for the History of Mathematics, of which he was President from 1991 to 1994, is most visible in their wide-ranging, erudite, and attractive Newsletter, which has created a remarkable sense, not only of community but of family for the scattered members of that international group. He brought many young students into the Society, and helped it to be active in the campaign to prevent the destruction of the grave of the 19th Century Jewish mathematician J. J. Sylvester, which might otherwise have been turned into a north London car-park.
John enjoyed many signs of growing recognition in the last decade. He was chair of the International Study Group on the Relations between History and Pedagogy of Mathematics, which is affiliated to the International Commission on Mathematics Instruction (ICMI) from 1992 to 1996 and last year co-chaired an important ICMI Study. In 1998 he was the New Zealand Mathematical Society's Visiting Lecturer for 1998; and he was regularly invited to speak at major conferences in the United States.
John went to school at Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland. He gained a BA in Mathematics from Essex University in 1970 and an MSc and an MPhil from Warwick University in 1973 and 1977. He started working for the Open University in 1974, and became a lecturer there in 1979, and in due course a Senior Lecturer.
Alongside his commitment to mathematics and teaching John had wide learning in many disciplines and a lively interest in the worlds of the arts, thought, ideas and public life. As an openly gay man he lived his life positively and joyously, with great good humour and a fine sense of style. He expected and received the same generous tolerance of his lifestyle which he extended to all who lived differently. His society was an inclusive church which loved the diversity of man- and womankind. He was outraged by hypocrisy and campaigned energetically against laws, persons, and practices responsible for injustice, bringing to bear the same sharp intelligence that characterised his academic work.
John died in the house of one of his closest friends on a glorious summer day that had become a true celebration of his too short life. He was loved, befriended, respected, and admired by people all over the world. He died quickly of a dysfunctional liver and kidney, arising from a condition he had had for the last 10 years, and although he had recently been put on the list for a liver transplant, his own deteriorated more quickly than anticipated, making the operation impossible.
He leaves cousins Sandy and Ian Blair, beloved godchildren Sophie Blair and Henry Britton, and a multitude of dear friends from every walk of life. In the words of in the Kandor and Ebb song, he felt that 'life is a cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret'.
Jeremy Gray
Open University
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