Emma Castelnuovo

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Emma Castelnuovo (born December 12, 1913 in Rome , † April 13, 2014 there ) was an Italian math teacher.

She was the daughter of the famous mathematician Guido Castelnuovo and the mathematician Federigo Enriques was her uncle, the brother of her mother Elbina. Her father Guido Castelnuovo was also active in mathematics education: he was twice vice-president of the ICMI, which was founded when he organized the ICM in Rome in 1908, and from 1911 to 1914 he was president of the Society of Mathematics Teachers in Italy, Mathesis, and editor of its Journal (Bollettino della Mathesis, replaced by Periodico di Matematiche in 1921). Her uncle Enriques was also active in mathematics education and was President of Mathesis from 1919 to 1932. In 1921 he published an essay on dynamic teaching . Both were of great influence on Emma Castelnuovo.

Emma Castelnuovo studied mathematics at the University of Rome with a Laureate degree in 1936 (the dissertation was on algebraic geometry). Because of the anti-Jewish laws, she could not become a teacher in 1938. Instead, she taught at a Jewish school and organized a kind of underground university. In 1945 she became a teacher in Rome, which she remained until 1972.

She made a particular contribution to the modernization of teaching in Euclidean geometry in schools. Her model was the book Éléments de géometrie (Paris 1741, in Italian translation 1751) by Alexis-Claude Clairaut . Based on this model, a balance should be found between rigor of argumentation, intuition and practical relevance with examples from real life. The focus is on the discovery of geometric properties and the mastery of transformations of geometric objects and mathematical rigor is not the primary goal, but rather a consequence of the further active learning of the students. She placed emphasis on visualizations and organized a number of successful exhibitions. Her father had taken similar views at the beginning of the 20th century. Like her father, she also advocated new topics in the curricula of secondary schools, in particular stochastics, with which she also asserted herself in the 1970s. In 1948, the first edition of her school book Geometria intuitiva was published. It was published until 1964 and was translated into Spanish and English. Like Hans Freudenthal, she advocated a role for mathematics history in the classroom and had other points of contact with Freudenthal, who also represented realistic mathematics classes. Pedagogically she was influenced by Jean Piaget , Maria Montessori and the school of Ovide Decroly . She also worked with the stochastic Bruno de Finetti .

In Italy, for example, she was connected to Caleb Gattegno (1911–1988) with her views and she had close contacts in French-speaking countries, for example with Paul Libois (1901–1991) in Belgium and later with the Institut de Recherche sur l'Enseignement des Mathématiques (IREM) in Paris. She was also influential in Spanish-speaking countries. She was a founding member of the Commission Internationale pour l'Étude et l'Amélioration de l'Enseignement des Mathématiques (CIEAEM) with Gustave Choquet , Jean Dieudonné , Jean Piaget , Evert Willem Beth , Ferdinand Gonseth , Hans Freudenthal , André Lichnerowicz , Gattegno (the Was secretary), the teacher Lucienne Félix (1901–1994) and others. From 1979 to 1981 she was President of the CIEAEM. She was the representative of Italy at the conference in Royaumont near Paris in 1959, at which Dieudonné and others propagated the new mathematics .

From 1976 to 1982 she was in Niger four times on behalf of UNESCO . From 1975 to 1978 she was on the Executive Committee of the ICMI.

Since 2016, the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction has presented the Emma Castelnovo Award for achievements in the practice of mathematics teaching.

Fonts

  • Geometria intuitiva, per le scuole medie inferiori, R. Carabba, Rome 1948, Florence: La Nuova Italia 1952, 1959
  • I numeri. Aritmetica pratica, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1962.
  • Didattica matematica, Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1963.
  • Documenti di un'esposizione matematica. "Da bambini a uomini", Turin, Boringhieri, 1972.
  • La matematica, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1979.
  • Pentole, ombre, formiche. In viaggio con la matematica, Scandicci, La Nuova Italia, 1993.
  • with F. Lorenzoni (Ed.): L'officina matematica: ragionare con i materiali. Le lezioni della più grande ricercatrice italiana di didattica della matematica, Molfetta: La Meridiana, 2008
  • with Mario Barra: Matematica nella realtà, Turin: Boringhieri 1976
  • Un metodo attivo nell'insegnamento della geometria intuitiva, Periodico di Matematiche (4), Volume 24, 1946, pp. 129-140.
  • The teaching of geometry in Italian high schools during the last two centuries: some aspects related to society, in: C. Keitel, P. Damerow, A. Bishop, P. Gerdes (eds.): Mathematics, education and society. Science and technology education, Document Series N. 35, UNESCO Paris, 1989, pp. 51-52.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emma Castelnovo Award, ICMI ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , with photo and biography  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mathunion.org
personal data
SURNAME Castelnuovo, Emma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian math teacher
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 2014
Place of death Rome