Malba Tahan

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Malba Tahan

Malba Tahan , real name Júlio César de Mello e Souza (born May 6, 1895 in Rio de Janeiro , † June 18, 1974 in Recife ) was a Brazilian writer and teacher of mathematics . He gained international fame primarily for his contributions to entertainment mathematics, published under the pseudonym Malba Tahan .

Life

childhood and education

Júlio César was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1895 to João de Deus de Mello e Souza and Carolina Carlos de Toledo. His mother was a teacher, and his father also worked in this profession at times. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Queluz , where Júlio César grew up. The family was large, Júlio César had four younger and four older brothers. Júlio César started writing at an early age and loved making up stories.

After initially being tutored by his mother, he went to Rio de Janeiro and attended the Colégio Militar and the Colégio Pedro II . From 1913 he completed an engineering apprenticeship at the Escola Politécnica of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro , and he also attended an evening course to become a teacher at the Escola Normal. He also helped his mother, who had moved back to Rio de Janeiro after the death of her father and founded a school there, with teaching and worked as an assistant in the national library .

Teacher

Júlio César's teaching career began in 1913 at the Colégio Pedro II . He initially taught history, geography and physics, and it was not until 1921 that he decided instead to study mathematics. He taught at many schools, from 1937 also as a professor of mathematics at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro .

Together with other teachers of his time, including Cecil Thiré and Euclides Roxo , with whom he also wrote textbooks, he campaigned for the modernization of mathematics teaching and broke new ground. In 1941 he founded a distance learning project together with Rádio Nacional and otherwise used the media to popularize mathematics. He traveled through Brazil and gave many lectures on mathematics didactics .

writer

Júlio César's first publication as a writer dates back to 1918. He had offered the newspaper O Imparcia some short stories, but they were rejected. However, he simply resubmitted them, this time using the pen name RS Slade, and they were printed. This led to his publishing under foreign names.

He first used the name Malba Tahan in 1925 for the regular column Contos de Malba Tahan (Stories of Malba Tahan) in the newspaper A Noite . The stories allegedly came from an Arab scholar and were translated by the also fictional Breno Alencar Bianco. He provided the character of Malba Tahan with an extensive fictional biography. It wasn't until 1933 that it was revealed that Malba Tahan was only a fictional person, but even today many readers still assume that Malba Tahan is a writer from the Middle East.

Since 1952 he officially used the name Malba Tahan with a special permission from the Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas .

Private

Júlio César married Nair Marques da Costa, one of his students, in 1925. The couple had three children.

He got involved with leprosy sufferers, criticized their stigmatization and campaigned for their integration into society.

In 1974 Júlio César died of a heart attack while on a lecture tour in Recife .

Works

Júlio César wrote a total of 118 books. His greatest international success is the book O Homen que Calculava , first published in 1938 , which saw numerous editions and was translated into many languages, including German under the title Beremís' Welt .

The book is about the young Persian number and arithmetic artist Beremís Samir. On a trip to Baghdad he has to solve math puzzles again and again . Since, in addition to his mathematical skills, he always shows himself to be friendly and godly, he gains a great reputation with the people he meets , including Caliph Al-Motazen . As a reward he is finally allowed to marry Telassin, the daughter of Sheikh Iezid, to whom he had previously given mathematics lessons.

In many other works, too, Júlio César combines oriental tales - often compared in style with the stories from the Arabian Nights - with entertaining mathematics . He also wrote several books with Christian and Jewish legends .

Under his real name, he mainly published mathematics textbooks and books on mathematics didactics .

Honors

Malba Tahan received two awards from the Academia Brasileira de Letras , in 1930 for Céu de Allah , in 1939 for O Homen que Calculava , and he was also a member of the Academia Pernambucana de Letras .

Since 2013, his birthday, May 6th, has been celebrated in Brazil as the national day of mathematics.

Several schools are named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1895-1906 - Infância e Queluz. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  2. ↑ a b c 1906-1925 - No Rio de Janeiro: estudo e trabalho. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  3. ↑ 1937-1957 - A popularização da matemática. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  4. ↑ a b 1957-1974 - Educação Matemática. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  5. ↑ Alex Bellos : Malba Tahan: the literary hoaxer who made Brazil love maths . In: The Guardian . May 9, 2014 ( theguardian.com [accessed January 9, 2019]).
  6. ↑ Grazielle Taise Mihailov: As Contribuições de Malba Tahan ao Ensino da Matemática. (PDF) p. 16 , accessed on January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  7. ↑ Picture of the ID with the documents on malbatahan.com.br
  8. ↑ 1925-1937 - Malba Tahan entra em cena. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  9. ↑ 1974 - Morte e memória. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  10. ^ Obra completa. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  11. ↑ Malba Tahan: Beremís' World: Journey through the Universe of Mathematics . Kein & Aber , Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-0369-5544-5 .
  12. ↑ Helder Macedo de Held: Malba Tahan: Homem e Personagem. (PDF) (No longer available online.) P. 10 , archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese). 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.anpuhsp.org.br
  13. ^ Enne Karol Venancio de Sousa, John A. Fossa: Júlio César de Mello e Souza ea Educação Matemática. (PDF) p. 5 , accessed on January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  14. ^ Dia da Matemática. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
  15. ^ Cardy Meier: Malba Tahan. Retrieved January 11, 2019 (Portuguese).
personal data
SURNAME Tahan, Malba
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mello e Souza, Júlio César de (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian writer and math teacher
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Rio de Janeiro
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1974
Place of death Recife