IN MEMORIAM

Andrejs Dunkels

October 15, 1939 ± December 30, 1998

Andrejs was born in Riga, the capital of Latvia, on October 15, 1939 soon after the start

of the Second World War. In October 1944, when Andrejs was five, he and his family

fled to Sweden where he grew up in the university town of Uppsala. From 1959 to 1964

he studied Mathematics, Mechanics and Physics, receiving the Swedish equivalents of a

BSc in 1962 and an MSc in 1964. Andrejs' love of teaching was evident during his

student years when he taught Mathematics part-time for a month in a lower-secondary

school in 1960 and at a summer school for secondary school children each summer from

1960 to 1964. It was typical of Andrejs that he should also do a course in Fortran

Programming as early as 1961, when computers were hardly known or recognized in the

academic world.

Andrejs achieved the highest mark in his Licentiate in 1964 and took up the post of

Lecturer in the Mathematics Department of UmeaÊ University. He also continued his

postgraduate studies in Mathematics and in Pedagogy to extend his qualifications to the

equivalent of an MSc (Education). Andrejs could have had a promising career in pure

mathematics, but it became clear from his early teaching experiences, and his interest in

Pedagogy, that his considerable talents would be dedicated not to pure research but to

mathematics education.

So in 1966 he took the exciting step of moving to Kenya as part of a Swedish

Government foreign aid project, where he was the Founding Head of the Mathematics

Department at the Kenya Science Teachers College in Nairobi. There he taught

Mathematics to lower secondary school teachers and also found time to write a series

of mathematics textbooks, to initiate a nationwide mathematics contest for students and

to learn Swahili well enough to teach it to other foreigners. In 1969 Andrejs returned to

UmeaÊ as Senior Lecturer in Mathematics. In 1972 he earned the equivalent of a PhD for

his research in Potential Theory, and a year later he was awarded the Diploma in

Education with Honors from the UmeaÊ Teacher Training College.

In 1973 Andrejs moved to LuleaÊ in the far North of Sweden to take up the post of

Lecturer (and later Senior Lecturer) at the University, dividing his teaching equally

between engineering students and student teachers for grades 1±7. In the years after

1973, Andrejs became well known in Sweden, and throughout the world, as an

innovator in teacher training and textbook writing and as a stimulating speaker on

mathematics and statistics education. Andrejs attended and spoke at numerous local,

national and international gatherings throughout the 1970s and 1980s and was tireless in

the preparation and thought he put into everything he did while retaining a sense of

humor and a humanity which made a deep and lasting impression on all who met him.

He was invited to make personal lecture tours to many parts of the world, including his

visit to Melbourne in 1995, when at dinner one evening he produced a yo-yo, which he

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always carried with him, and mentioned that he had once been yo-yo champion of

Uppland in Sweden.

Andrejs received the Teacher of the Year award in 1986 from LuleaÊ University and in

1987 the Adelie Prize for excellence in teaching awarded by the student body of LuleaÊ

University. On October 18, 1996, he successfully defended his thesis Contributions to

Mathematical Knowledge and its Acquisition and received the very first PhD in

Mathematics and Didactics of Mathematics awarded by the Department of Mathematics

at LuleaÊ University. He authored or co-authored numerous textbooks, articles, papers and

reports. A selection of titles will give the unique flavour of his work: A Mathematical

Lunch in the Air; More Popsicle-Stick Multiplication; Making and Exploring Tangrams;

Another Slant on Slope; Creative Teaching by Mistakes; Learning the Unteachable;

Looking at Euclid's Proposition 20 of Book III with Closed and Open Eyes; Why are

Boys as Afraid of Mathematics as Girls? Typical of Andrejs' articles was Much more

than multiplying by 5, an intriguing problem-solving task combined with an exemplary

exposition of how to run a teacher-training session. There was always so much to learn

from Andrejs!

Andrejs was a superb cartoonist and illustrator in his own right; his letters were

often embellished with original designs and borders, drawn by hand or compu-

ter-designed by himself or his talented son Adam. He illustrated five published

books written by other people and enlivened his own published works with cartoons

and illustrations. For example, his booklet on how to solve Rubik's cube contains a

patient and clear explanation of what the cube is, how to take it apart, how it

works, and how it relates to Group Theory Ð all accompanied by hand-drawn

pictures of the cube and its various manipulations. And of course there were the

Footies, a lovable family of feet who make comments on life and mathematics, and

amusing puns about statistics and probability. But there was more, Andrejs was a

good singer and keen on music, so there was a music score and a song to help re-

member the mnemonics, and also a drawing of Hamlet with an appropriate quotation

from the play!

It was after 1975 that his life took on a darker tone as he started to suffer from

different illnesses which were later diagnosed by an immunologist as his body

trying to reject his own glands. Over the years a variety of treatments were re-

commended and Andrejs bore the resulting inconvenience and pain with character-

istic fortitude and courage. During the 1990s he traveled abroad when he could and

continued to produce work of high quality. In April 1994 he sent a letter to his

friends to say that he had been on the sick list since November but was now on

new medication and felt much better. He promised a personal answer (and within

two days) to all and every friend who would write back to him Ð it must have

been a very busy 2 days! In that letter, Andrejs wrote a number of things that

illustrate his attitude to life:

It is really great to be back to life again. While I've been sick I've thought much about

what I want to do for the rest of my life, I've come to the conclusion that communication

is the purpose of life, really Ð with family and with friends. Why can people not be

friends? There are so many wonderful words to be said, there are so many wonderful

songs to be sung.

IN MEMORIAM4

In November 1998, Andrejs e-mailed:

The good news is that I was sent from here (in the North) to the University Hospital of

Uppsala. A whole group of experts joined and tested me thoroughly. All this gave as a result

new medication Ð and now I've been fine for a little more than three weeks. Such a

wonderful sequence has not prevailed for the last one and a half years, so I'm happy Ð

hoping that this condition will stabilize.

It was therefore a great shock to get the news that, despite his recent recovery, the much

loved and respected Andrejs died suddenly of a heart attack on December 30, 1998. Our

thoughts go especially to Kerstin and Adam, to his other close relatives, and to his many

friends throughout the world who will have to come to terms with the loss of a dear

person, an exceptional human being and an unforgettable friend and colleague.

Ð Alan Rogerson

Mathematics in Society Project

IN MEMORIAM 5