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ANNA SOPHIA KRYGOWSKA

A N N A SOPHIA K R Y G O W S K A

On May 16th 1988 Anna Sophia Krygowska passed away. Despite her great age her death will mean a considerable loss for the international effort of investigation and improvement of mathematics teaching, let alone her continued contribution to mathematics education in Poland, her mother country.

She was born in September 1904 in Lvov, then in Poland now in USSR. She studied mathematics in Jagellonian University in Cracow and after- wards taught mathematics in secondary school for almost 25 years. During the Nazi occupation she ran clandestine mathematics courses and helped organising clandestine education in the southern region of the country, a very dangerous activity.

She wrote her Ph.D in 1950 and helped to organise the first College of Education at an academic level. It was the beginning of her successful efforts to elevate the didactics of mathematics to the level of a scientific discipline and to obtain its formal recognition as a specialty of mathemat- ics. The research movement that she animated and guided for over 30 years was named by Hans Freudenthal "Cracow School of Mathematics Didac- tics". She developed a theory of mathematics teaching and learning (pub- lished in Polish only) based on a careful analysis of mathematics in various aspects, and on theses from psychological, chiefly Piagetian, theories.

Anna Sophia Krygowska was well known and highly praised in the international community of mathematics education, though mainly in its francophone division. In the 1950s she joined the International Commis- sion for the Study and Improvement of Mathematics Teaching (CIEAEM) and participated in most of its Meetings since. President of the Commission in the years 1970-1974, she later inspired its activities as Honorary Presi- dent. During the 39th Meeting in Sherbrooke, 1987, she delivered two lectures and contributed significantly to the discussions and reporting sessions. She also participated in many events and endeavours under the auspices of UNESCO and ICMI.

Her contributions to mathematics teaching in Poland are invaluable. She always thought that school mathematics should be genuine mathematics, whatever the teaching level. She also praised logical rigour, which view she embodied in her rigorous geometry textbooks. But on the other hand she

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was prudent enough not to allow Bourbakism to prevail in the curriculum. Her recent work was concentrated on a precise description of what it is to teach genuine mathematics to all, with a XXth century perspective.

Madame Krygowska loved school and mathematics; to them she devoted her life. She also had a private passion: the Tatra mountains. She died in her full creative powers, leaving unaccomplished projects, an unfinished book; sketches of talks and papers for CIEAEM-40 and ICME-6 in Budapest where her absence was felt painful ly. . .

WSP, 30-084, Krakow, Poland

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