Formative years: Hans Freudenthal in prewar Amsterdam

Harm Jan Smid (1)

1 TU Delft - Delft University of Technology

Hans Freudenthal started his public career in mathematics education after the war. During the war, when he was expelled by the Germans from the university, he made a thorough study of the didactics of teaching arithmetic. Freudenthal himself made on several places remarks about the influences he underwent before the war, he even suggested that his “framework” on mathematics education was already formed then. Although he was in those year active as a mathematician in the first place, there can be no doubt that he was then already seriously interested in the problems of the teaching of mathematics. He had inspiring discussions with other mathematicians with unorthodox ideas about the teaching of mathematics and read publications that helped him to develop his own ideas. The seeds that were sown in those years would bear fruit long afterwards.

Mots clés: Ehrenfest; Afanassjewa; realistic mathematics education; transfer; Freudenthal

Domaines: Histoire et perspectives sur les mathématiques [math.HO]; Education

Harm Jan Smid. Formative years: Hans Freudenthal in prewar Amsterdam. History and Pedagogy of Mathematics, Jul 2016, Montpellier, France. ⟨hal-01349232⟩