Elected: 2001
Country (Nationality)
Mozambique
Discipline
Mathematical Sciences
Bio
In 2012, Professor Paulus Gerdes was awarded the highest distinction prize for excellence in higher education, research and teaching in Mozambique by then President Armando Guebuza. He was one of the five winners of the Excellence Award for the Higher Education Gala celebrating achievements made in the sector from 1962-2012. He was a holistic Professor given to the three-fold nature of academic core business: teaching and learning, research and innovation, and community engagement. He saw his commitment and interest in ethno-mathematics as a calling and mission. He interacted with the artisans in rural communities who weaved the baskets,
and produced motifs on textiles, hats and clay pots which he researched on, as friends and colleagues. He was one of few scholars in Africa who emerged as a giant in ethnomathematics by researching and revealing the ethnicity and cultural nature of basketry and traditional textiles using geometry as the interpretive tool.
In 2001, Professor Paulus Gerdes was elected a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences; and in 2005, he served in the Governing Council as its elected Vice President responsible for Southern Africa Region. He was re-elected into the same position in 2009 and served in this capacity untill 2014 when a new Governing Council was
elected under his coordination. His last public engagement with AAS was in 2014 when he coordinated the elections of the Academy’s Governing Council and announced the results in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
Death: Professor Gerdes had been sick for some time and was eventually admitted in a renowned private hospital in South Africa to get the best of medical attention available in Southern Africa. Professor Paulus Gerdes died on 11 November 2014. He died at 62 on his birthday.