Ubiratan D’ambrosio [1932-2021] – ethnomathematics educator for the twenty-first century

1. Introduction

Ubiratan D’Ambrosio was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in São Paulo. He was born in Brazil on 8 December 1932 and died there on 12 May 2021. He was widely known and respected as a mathematics educator and historian of mathematics (Karp & Roberts, 2014). It was in ethnomathematics (coined by analogy with ethnomusicology) that his contributions were pioneering: initially in the culture of colonization, and later in culture more generally, particularly in terms of international peace (D’Ambrosio, 1985, 1990, 1993, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2002, 2004, 2006; D'Ambrosio & Marmé, 1998).

Ubi served on the Editorial Board of this journal since its inception, at the invitation of its Founding Editor, Professor Avi Bajpai OBE of Loughborough University. His pioneering work in ethnomathematics alone is especially worthy of note, because many of its features can shed light on some current controversies in mathematics curriculum development in various countries, including Australia and parts of the US. These can be seen from the titles of some of his publications. There are worthwhile theses and dissertations awaiting those prepared to delve deeply and apply appropriately in their own cultural contexts the fascinating insights which arise from Ubi’s life work (Mesquita et al., 2011; Rosa et al., 2011).

2. Academic career

Ubi received his PhD at the University of São Paulo in Mathematics at the age of 21. He then continued his postgraduate research at the Istituto Matematico of the University of Genoa in Italy and at Brown University on Rhode Island, US. During his long academic career, he also at various times served as an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Institute of Mathematics at UNICAMP, Visiting Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Visiting Professor at the Regional University of Blumenau in Brazil, and Post-Graduate Professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo.

He ‘retired’ in a formal sense as Pro-Reitor of Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. However, in a practical sense, during his ‘retirement’ he continued teaching as a Professor at the Pontificia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, and as an invited lecturer and an advisor of graduate students at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Universidade Estadual Paulista at Rio Claro.

In addition to his teaching, he held important positions in international commissions and societies: Chief of the Unit of Curriculum of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington; President of the Interamerican Committee of Mathematics Education (IACME), President of the Latin American Society for the History of Science and Technology; President of the Brazilian Society of History of Science, a member of the Council of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Rotblat & D’Ambrosio, 1986) (which organization shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995), and a member of the Governing Board of the Institute for Information Technology in Education (IITE) of UNESCO. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It was at some of the international meetings of some of these societies that Avi Bajpai and I met him in the 1970s, so often that we hinted that ‘Ubi’ was short for ‘ubiquitous’, but more likely ‘Ubi Caritas’, because he was a big-hearted man of genuine charity!

3. Ethnomathematics

Wikipedia defines the development and meaning of ‘ethnomathematics’ as being ‘introduced by the Brazilian educator and mathematician Ubiratan D’Ambrosio in 1977 during a presentation for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Since D’Ambrosio put forth the term, people – D’Ambrosio included - have struggled with its meaning (“An etymological abuse leads me to use the words, respectively, ethno and mathema for their categories of analysis and tics from (from techne)”)’. In practice, ethnomathematics considers the background of the curriculum canvas on which we try to paint: ethnicity and culture, ethics and morals, war and peace, because what we teach, why we teach and to whom we teach are intimately related. They are not distinct silos, even if we ‘experts’ treat them that way sometimes.

Much of the research in the field of ethnomathematics has been about the intuitive mathematical thinking of small-scale, traditional, indigenous cultures, including Aboriginal Australians (Harris & Jones, 1991; Karp & Roberts, 2014). Some of his historical research dealt with the colonization process, particularly in South America. It is certainly not an attack on Western ways of thought, nor is it an attempt to soften a syllabus with pseudoscience. It reminds us that we don’t always know what we don’t know, that we can complement our knowledge of the cultural heritage of our fellow citizens; as such, ethnomathematics has a definite place in mathematical education and it contributes to the history of mathematics.

In 2001 Ubi was awarded the Kenneth O. May Medal, an award of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics (ICHM) ‘for the encouragement and promotion of the history of mathematics internationally’. It was established in 1989 and is named in honour of Kenneth O. May, the founder of ICHM. Ubi was also particularly proud of his role as a Corresponding Editor of the Springer Nexus Network Journal, devoted to architecture and mathematics, as he had studied such connections in non-Western societies (Selin & D’Ambrosio, 2000). For these contributions and achievements he was awarded the Felix Klein Medal in 2005 from the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICME).

4. Concluding comments

Though not dwelt on here, Ubi was an eminent mathematics educator, not only in his roles in conferences, but also for his publications (D’Ambrosio, 1981; D’Ambrosio, 2007; D’Ambrosio, 2009; D’Ambrosio, 2011; D’Ambrosio, 2016; D’Ambrosio & Domite, 2008; D’Ambrosio & D’Ambrosio, 2013). Thus, there were professional society journal festschrifts published in Ubi’s honour for his 60th and 75th birthdays, but he could not retire in a conventional sense. It was therefore a dubious honour for me to share his last publication in March this year (D’Ambrosio & Shannon, 2021): ‘dubious’, not because it was not an honour, but because we feel the loss of an energetic, original thinker who can challenge our presuppositions and the blank spaces in the educational canvas on which we all try to contribute.

Some representative publications of Ubi over the last 30 years of his ‘retirement’, and some related to Ubi, are included below; a complete list for someone who died 89 years young would be too lengthy. He was author or co-author of more than 300 publications in 6 languages! As can be seen here, many of them are pertinent to controversial issues in national current curriculum development activities, particularly with mathematics syllabuses.

The passing of Ubi is a reminder of the value of the precious word ‘International’ in the title of our journal!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.