IN MEMORIAM: HANS FREUDENTHAL

The founding editor of this journal passed away on October 13th last. He had just celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday.

To devote an in memoriam to him briefly and to the point will be difficult if

not impossible. He would have disapproved of an extended one, because he did

not want to found a school nor to be adulated.

To be a master of conciseness, however, would be impossible too in this case,

because of what he was as a human being and of what he did in the fields of

both mathematics and mathematics education and its philosophy. The only thing

left is to steer a steady course between the Scylla of wealth and the Charybdis of

concision.

"What are you waiting for? Hoist the sails!", he would have encouraged.

He did not wish to found a school. All he wanted to do during the last decades

of his lifetime was to found mathematics education according to a human

measure, mathematics as a human activity. Mathematics should be taught so as

to be useful to all who need it; and according to him that includes many if not all

people.

Children can teach you a lot. This made him propagate the need to observe

individual learning processes time and again, if not incessantly. Being its

advocate became for him like riding his hobby-horse, not to act the part of Don

Quixote, going out of his way each time a wind-mill could be tilted at, but to

underline his fruitful and promising alternative for research of the evaluative

kind.

Not blowing the trumpet but carrying on with the work would be his device,

proceeding with what he had begun.

It is not his death which is a milestone in the history of mathematics education

and its development as a full-fledged, independent science. What counts is what

he contributed to it and the spirit and culture by which he imbued it: his

contributions are milestones to admire, to be inspired by, to reflect upon, to

criticize and maybe even to stand by and rest for a while, to take a deep breath

or whatever else. But finally he would expect us to add to the sequel new

contributions in the same spirit and of comparable durability.

It is needless to say: "Hurry up!" Sufficient preparatory time will be available, for he himself already prepared the first milestone of the post-Freudenthal era.

Its title? Revisiting Mathematics Education (Mathematics Education Library),

Educational Studies in Mathematics 21:599 1990.

600 IN MEMORIAM

Kluwer Academic Publishers. This, as a matter of course, also means revisiting Freudenthal; his educational inheritance on a salver! Date of publication? April 1991. Its content reflects once more the qualities that pervade all of his works.

Freudenthal was bom in Luckenwalde in Germany on September 17th, 1905.

He studied at the universities of Berlin and Paris. The famous intuitionst L.E.J.

Brouwer took the initiative to have Freudenthal come to Amsterdam. In 1946 he

got an appointment as a professor at the State University of Utrecht. His

assignments were pure and applied mathematics and the foundations of mathe-

matics. His scientific work focussed on parts of geometry. He made con- siderable contributions to topology and the theory of Lie-groups.

Although he had been interested in it for a long time, Freudenthal's change of perspective from mathematics to mathematics education became obvious internationally in 1955. Then he entered ICMI as the representative of The Netherlands. From then on his star was in the ascendant: representative, Member

at Large, etc. and finally president from 1966 to 1970. It was in this capacity that he started Educational Studies in Mathematics in 1968 with the publication of the proceedings of the colloquium "How to teach mathematics so as to be

useful?" (Utrecht, August 21-25, 1967). Shortly after that, by taking the directorship of IOWO (1971) he completed his shift from maths to its education.

Ever since, a spate of publications worth taking to heart by each maths educator have seen the light of day. Even a summary of subjects would be too long a list. Recapitulating those missing would be wiser!... He filled the equivalent of more than one volume of ESM all by himself since 1968. He

retired in 1975 but kept working. On October 12th last he visited the Research

Group OW&OC for the last time.

Apart from mathematics and its education he also contributed to Dutch

literature by poems, novels and essays. He filled many columns in outstanding

newspapers. He spoke and read many languages. He had six honorary degrees. He.. .Be careful! Scylla has ogled too much already. So, to put it briefly: he was an all-rounder and even more than that. The last homo universalis has gone. The international community of mathematics education will remember him with

gratitude and deep esteem.

On behalf of the editors of Educational Studies in Mathematics

LEEN STREEFLAND

IN MEMORIAM: HANS FREUDENTHAL

With great sorrow we have learned that Professor Hans Freudenthal has passed

away.

Professor Freudenthal founded our journal Educational Studies in Mathematics

in 1968 and edited it for many years. He has contributed greatly to the present

prestige of our joumal and our book programme in mathematics education. We

will remember him as a very pleasant person and good friend to whom we owe

much gratitude.

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

Educational Studies in Mathematics 21:601 1990.