I met John Fauvel the first time at the HIMED (History In Mathematics Education) Conference in Leicester (UK) in spring 1990. On this occasion he was launching in the ambit of the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) the tradition of this kind of conferences, in which historians of mathematics, mathematics educators, and teachers meet together to discuss how to cope with the teaching/learning problems using history of mathematics. The place of the conference was extremely evocative and stimulating: in Leicester there is The Mathematical Association Library with all the memories of this glorious association. The meeting was very successful and the room of the old building was not sufficient to contain all the participants. Being almost a beginner in the field and coming from the mathematical environment I was very surprised to meet such a relaxed atmosphere in which there were scientific talks, workshops, but also movies and drama. For the first time I experienced the advantages and the pleasure of using different means of communication. There is a record of this conference in the journal For the learning of mathematics (number 2, volume 11, 1991). The opening paper (‘Using history in mathematics education’, 2-6) in this issue of the journal is a kind of manifesto of John’s ideas about the use of history in mathematics teaching. This paper was for me (just starting in the field) a reference point in my successive works. What I liked particularly in this conference was the possibility to attend workshops and talks carried out by teachers on their actual experiments with history in classroom. This was my first inspiration to study the problem of the use of history in mathematics teaching through an “approach through examples”: starting from the analysis of what is really happening in the classroom in order to interpret the needs of the teachers and to put these needs in relation with the possibilities offered by history.
The HIMED conferences became a tradition. Afterwards a one-day meeting was held annually, mainly addressed to a national audience and every two years the meeting lasted longer and gathered a more international audience. There has been a core of foreign participants to the international meeting: évelyne Barbin and many delegates of the IREMs (Maryvonne Hallez, Anne Michel-Pajus,...) from France; Jan van Maanen, Marjolein Kool,... from The Netherlands; Torkil Heiede from Denmark and myself from Italy. Occasionally participants from Norway, Portugal, Sweden joined the meeting. There have been participants from the other continents; I remember Ubiratan d’Ambrosio from Brazil, Robert Mitchell, Fred Rickey and Frank Swetz from USA, Luis Moreno and Guillermina Waldegg from Mexico. With these meetings the community of researchers in the field of history and pedagogy of mathematics acquired a specific identity. Even more, due to the particular way John Fauvel was dealing with colleagues, the members of this community felt as belonging to a family, which became the European core of the International Study Group on the Relations between History and Pedagogy of Mathematics.
John Fauvel was chair of HPM (from 1992 to 1996), which is affiliated to the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction and in 1998 co-chaired the ICMI Study held in Luminy (Marseilles, France) “The role of the history of mathematics in the teaching and learning of mathematics” (see ICMI Bulletin 42, June 1997). The result of this big enterprise is a recent volume (J. Fauvel, & J. Van Maanen (editors), History in mathematics education: the ICMI Study, Kluwer, Dordrecht-Boston-London, 2000). He contributed to the activities of the group HPM also as member of the scientific committee European summer University “History and epistemology in mathematics education” held in Montpellier (1993, France), in Braga (1996, Portugal) and Louvain-La-Neuve/Leuven (1999, Belgium).
From 1991 to 1994 John Fauvel was president of BSHM (British Society for the History of Mathematics). His involvement in this Society developed in different directions. He organised or co-organised 29 conferences for the BSHM, in particular the above mentioned HIMED and the September conferences on themes of the history of mathematics held alternatively in Cambridge and Oxford. I have participated to some of them and again I found the atmosphere very friendly, culturally stimulating, and collaborative. Among the themes touched by these conferences I would like to mention that of 1992 (‘European mathematics 1848-1939’) and that of 1994 (‘Networks of communication in mathematics in the 19th and early 20th century’), which witness the idea underlying John’s work that mathematics is part of the social life. As an important activity in the BSHM I like to quote the regular organisation of days devoted to the presentation of research in progress carried out by young scholars in the history of mathematics.
One of the main tasks he afforded in his period of presidency of BSHM was editing the newsletter of the Society (since 1995). It is widely recognised that this it is the best Newsletter for any organisation I know. To read it is a pleasure for the eyes and the mind. The BSHM newsletter is a clear expression of the way of working of John Fauvel: attention for the cultural and informative side, but also great attention to details, the visual/aesthetic side. He was an effective communicator and I learnt from him the importance of using different means (words, pictures, movies, ancient drawings) to transmit ideas and emotions. Through the pages of the BSHM newsletter he fought to preserve the grave of J. J. Sylvester from destruction and blamed the sale of the Turner collection by Keele University.
John Fauvel was also on the editorial board of a number of journals, including For the learning of mathematics, Science and education, Themes in education, Paradigm, Radical philosophy. He has been in the executive committee of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics.
As a present chair of HPM group I have received a lot of messages all over the world, expressing the sadness for having lost both a friend and a person so present in promoting history of mathematics and mathematics itself in school and society. I like to remember an aspect of his personality that is evidenced by the structure of the works during the meeting of ICMI Study in Luminy and the related book: the idea of democracy in culture. During the ICMI meeting all the participants had the opportunity to express their ideas that are recorded in the book. So the book contains a plurality of voices and is a unique fresco of opinions and experiences.
He was a man with many interests (social, cultural, and affective). He played violin, recorder, pianola and clavichord. He edited cookery books; at the end of conferences he often asked my opinion about the food served (as an Italian it is assumed that I am competent in this field). He liked gardening. He liked to take photographs of us during the conferences. These photos appeared in reports and proceedings of meetings signifying that behind ideas and work there are persons. He has been for me (as for many other researchers in history or education) an important cultural reference, a source of advises and encouragement. I learnt from him a lot of things. It has been a pleasure to have met him.
Fulvia Furinghetti
Universita` di Genova
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