Mathematical culture and mathematics education in Hungary in the XXTH century

Abstract

This paper treats a special Hungarian tradition of mathematics and its teaching, which emerged at the end of the 19th century. First, I briefly explain the circumstances of the formation of high quality Hungarian mathematics in the late 19th- early 20th century, touching on the socio-economic and cultural context as well as the educational reforms of the period. In a second part, I focus on a specific group of first-rate Hungarian mathematicians and mathematics educators of the mid-20th century; all of them participated in discussions of educational questions during the 1940s, and later influenced the important mathematics educational reform of the 1960s and 1970s led by Tamás Varga. In the third part I analyse some of their writings (books popularising mathematics, papers about mathematics education, correspondences), in order to attempt to characterise their conception of the nature of mathematics and its teaching. The historical and the textual analysis will also show that some well-known thinkers of Hungarian origin like G. Pólya and I. Lakatos are in close relation to the tradition represented by this Hungarian group.