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Person: Souza, Júlio Mello e

Júlio César de Mello e Souza was a Brazilian mathematician who wrote very popular texts such as The man who counted under the pseudonym Malba Tahan. Brazil's National Day of Mathematics was instituted in 2013 to be on 6 May, Mello e Souza's birthday

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• Joao de Deus had been born in Rio de Janeiro to parents who had emigrated from Portugal.
• Carolina had moved from Serra Negra to Queluz when she was seventeen years old to take over running the local primary school.
• Brazil hit hard economic times with a decline of the coffee farms, and the Colégio Joao de Deus was forced to close.
• Júlio César had four younger siblings: Nelson Carlos de Mello e Souza (1898-1948), Rubens de Mello e Souza (1900-1924), Olga de Mello e Souza (1902-1973) and Jose Carlos de Mello e Souza (1905-1990).
• Let us note at this point that Rubens became a test pilot and died testing a plane when only 24 years old.
• Inventive and mischievous, his favourite toy was the frogs in the backyard and on the banks of the Paraíba River.
• To the bulging frogs he gave solemn names of "Monsignor" and "Illustrious Sir".
• As a little boy, he played at teaching a group of frogs and leading them with a wand.
• As an adult, many friends and admirers began to present him with replicas of frogs in crockery, wood, iron, jade and crystal.
• Júlio César was successful and began his studies there in 1906 as a boarding student.
• He began his studies there in 1909.
• This college, the third oldest in Brazil founded in 1837, took pupils from the full range of ages.
• At this boarding school, Júlio César would offer to write essays for his fellow pupils and in this way made some money which he used to fund his trips home and also to buy bars of his favourite chocolate.
• One night the principal of the college woke him up and took him outside to see Halley's Comet.
• This extraordinary man leaves his house before dawn and walks for almost an hour to get to the boarding school to wake up two boys to see Halley's Comet.
• We were the only ones who had remained there because the others had all been collected by their parents.
• At this time, Mello e Souza "had no passion for mathematics" but he decided he wanted a career as a teacher.
• To study History you have to read books, magazines ...
• "You know what, it's better to teach Mathematics." Because Mathematics is that thing, it doesn't vary.
• In October 1912, he was appointed as an assistant at the National Library of Brazil in Cinelândia square in Rio de Janeiro.
• This library, established in 1810, had only been inaugurated in its new building two years earlier on 29 October 1910.
• It was an appointment that Mello e Souza loved, enjoying being among such a wonderful collection of books.
• He also taught for four years at the Guanabara Public Primary School.
• In addition to studying civil engineering and teaching, he also began working for a teaching qualification taking evening classes at the Normal School, the Escola Normal do Distrito Federal, which later became the Rio de Janeiro Institute of Education.
• There were teachers who didn't teach anything, didn't know didactics, didn't know anything ...
• The engineering course at the Polytechnic School was for five years and so Mello e Souza should have graduated in 1917 but he chose not to at that time.
• He graduated with his engineering degree on 13 September 1932, but we will come to that below.
• His publishing career began in 1918 with the newspaper O Imparcial Ⓣ(The Impartial).
• The secretary of the paper was Leonidas de Rezende and Mello e Souza offered him some short stories he had written.
• They were not published and soon Mello e Souza went along to the newspaper office and asked for them back.
• He changed the name on the last page from Mello e Souza to R S Slady, took them back to Leonidas and told him that these were Portuguese translations he had made of stories by an American author R S Slady that were very popular in New York.
• The first of these, The Jew's Revenge, was published in O Imparcial Ⓣ(The Impartial) on the following day and Mello e Souza decided that to be a successful author he needed to create a pseudonym.
• He invented Ali Ielid Izz-Edim ibn Salim Hank Malba Tahan, a believer in Allah and his holy prophet Mohammed, known simply as Malba Tahan.
• My idea was to surprise Brazil with a literary mystification.
• Invent an Arab writer and publish educational oriental tales.
• My idea was to surprise Brazil with a literary mystification.
• Invent an Arab writer and publish educational oriental tales.
• He recommended that his secretary, Euricles de Mattos, publish the tales of Malba Tahan on the front page of 'A Noite', preceding them with an apocryphal biography.
• He never revealed to anyone (not even to Euricles) the secret of the literary mystification of which he was not only an accomplice, but largely responsible.
• At this time Mello e Souza was a teacher at Colégio Pedro II.
• He had, as we saw above, been a pupil at this school and there he had been taught by Euclides de Medeiros Guimaraes Roxo (1890-1950), a mathematics teacher who became director of the school.
• she was my geometry student.
• And the youngest is called Ivan Gil de Mello e Souza.
• Ivan Gil de Mello e Souza is not just one name, it's two names; Ivan Gil.
• None of them have a vocation for mathematics.
• These articles were the first of a very large number, all written by the mysterious Arab author, Malba Tahan, in newspapers and magazines throughout Brazil.
• Also in 1925 his first book Contos de Malba Tahan Ⓣ(Tales of Malba Tahan) was published; it was the first of over 100 books with author Malba Tahan or Júlio César de Mello e Souza.
• His fame, however, came though some extraordinary books like Matemática divertida e curiosa Ⓣ(Fun and curious mathematics) (1934) and, his most famous, The Man Who Counted: A Collection of Mathematical Adventures (1937).
• Note that we have given the title of the English translation of this last mentioned work but the date we give is for the publication of the Portuguese first edition.
• The adventures of Beremiz Samir, The Man Who Counted, take the reader on a journey in which, time and again, Samir summons his extraordinary mathematical powers to settle disputes, give wise advice, overcome dangerous enemies, and win for himself fame, fortune, and rich rewards.
• We learn of previous mathematicians and come to admire Samir's wisdom and patience.
• In the grace of Tahan's telling, these stories hold unusual delights for the reader.
• The book transports you into a magical world of Bedouins, viziers, sheiks, princes and kings, rich in references to Islamic traditions and locations in the Middle East.
• The maths is gentle, accessible and drives the stories.
• It's mostly arithmetic, but there are geometrical puzzles too, and also curiosities like the magic square - a "square filled with numbers", which the Sultan presents to Beremiz after it has been salvaged from the house of a calligrapher.
• We mentioned above that Mello e Souza graduated with an engineering degree on 13 September 1932 although he completed the course in 1917.
• It seems likely that he did this to improve his chances in a competition for a full professorship at the Colégio Pedro II.
• He entered the competition in July 1933 submitting the thesis Estudo elementar das curvas planas - Funçoes Modulantes Ⓣ(Elementary study of plane curves - modulating functions).
• He was one of five candidates for the position all of whom had engineering degrees.
• The candidates sat a written test on the theory of determinants, studies by Sylvester and Cayley, and the theorems of Pascal, Brianchon and Desargues concerning conics.
• The successful candidate was Haroldo Lisboa da Cunha (1909-1991) who was certainly a fine teacher.
• Lisboa da Cunha later became Director of the Secondary Education Department of the Ministry of Education and then Secretary General for Education and Culture.
• Later he was Professor at the Universidade do Estado da Guanabara and in 1960 he became rector of the university.
• It was always unlikely that Mello e Souza would win against someone like Lisboa da Cunha since his revolutionary teaching methods were much criticised at the time.
• Although Mello e Souza is best known for The Man Who Counted, many today find his importance to be in the teaching methods he advocated.
• in his work beyond literary activities, Mello e Souza contributed to Mathematics Education in at least the following three ways: the publication of texts on the teaching of mathematics, the production of teaching materials and the elaboration of courses, which he taught in many parts of the nation, aimed at training teachers.
• In relation to the publication of texts on the teaching of mathematics, we can mention such works as 'A didática da matemática' (1957), 'O mundo precisa de ti professor' (1966), 'Páginas do bom professor' (1969) and 'Roteiro do bom professor' (1969).
• Malba Tahan's proposal presented a dynamic, living Mathematics, which sought to involve everyday life, reality, moving from abstraction to concrete.
• During his classes, he used concrete materials in the classroom, such as games, riddles, invented stories full of content and everyday situations, simulations and many other ways of teaching and learning that gave rise to more than 125 published works.
• The street was a dirt track, with no exit, and there was no public lighting or piped gas.
• The house was two storeys high and at the back was a yard with two leafy mango trees.
• Parties with relatives, friends and students were common.
• Everything at the Artur Araripe house was very well taken care of, with simplicity and good taste.
• His desk was filled with dictionaries, letters, books, incomplete articles or chapters, and blank papers.
• Often, he would sleep next to the book or encyclopaedia he was reading.
• In June 1974, Mello e Souza was still living as he had for so many years, teaching, giving courses, writing columns for newspapers and working on new books.
• On 18 June 1974 he was staying in the Hotel Boa Viagem in Recife where he was giving lectures at the conference 'The Art of Storytelling'.
• He rose early as usual and was preparing to deliver the talk "Games and Recreations in Mathematics Teaching" at Colégio Soares Dutra.
• He died following a heart attack at 5:30 in the morning.
• He also asks them to pray for him.
• For a long time, this date was informally celebrated by the Brazilian Society of Mathematics Education, and officially in some Brazilian States, such as Rio de Janeiro, since 1994.
• At the national level, a project was presented on 5 May 2004 by deputy Raquel Teixeira to institute Mathematics Day.
• The objective was for the Ministry of Education and Culture to encourage cultural and educational activities on that date, in addition to a moment of reflection on Mathematics Education, encouraging teachers and students to cultivate culture and knowledge.
• Only on 26 June 2013, the President of the Republic, Dilma Rousseff, sanctioned a law which officially instituted the National Day of Mathematics, which must be celebrated annually throughout the national territory.

Born 6 May 1895, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Died 18 June 1974, Recife, Brazil.

View full biography at MacTutor

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References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

1. O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive