Dikran "Dick" Tahta (August 7, 1928 – December 2, 2006) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
-Armenian
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
,
teacherIn education, a teacher is a person who educates others. A teacher who educates an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor....
and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
.
Dikran Tahta is a descendant of Ottoman Armenian family who settled in
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
after the
First World WarWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
. Much of his childhood, and the influence of his Armenian religious upbringing is reflected upon in his penultimate book
Ararat Associations, in which he notes how his parents were keen for their children to have an English education, yet made sure that they spoke
ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
at home.
Dikran "Dick" Tahta (August 7, 1928 – December 2, 2006) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
-Armenian
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
,
teacherIn education, a teacher is a person who educates others. A teacher who educates an individual student may also be described as a personal tutor....
and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
.
Biography
Dikran Tahta is a descendant of Ottoman Armenian family who settled in
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
after the
First World WarWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
. Much of his childhood, and the influence of his Armenian religious upbringing is reflected upon in his penultimate book
Ararat Associations, in which he notes how his parents were keen for their children to have an English education, yet made sure that they spoke
ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
at home. He was christened by Bishop Tourian in the Armenian Church in Manchester, and his name Dikran was shortened to the diminutive Dick, but he never forgot his Armenian roots.
Some of these are reflected on in his book
Ararat Associations, where he remembers "my father, who would be standing, like the other males, with open arms extended in their own way of praying. Kneeling was for women and children".
From
Rossall SchoolRossall School is a British, co-educational, public school in between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year...
, in
FleetwoodFleetwood is a town within the Wyre district of Lancashire, England, lying at the northwest corner of the Fylde. It had a population of 26,840 people at the 2001 Census. It forms part of the Greater Blackpool conurbation. The town was the first planned community of the Victorian era...
,
LancashireLancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. However, Lancaster is still considered to be the county town...
, he gained a scholarship to
Christ Church, OxfordThis article is about the Oxford college. For other uses, see Christ Church or Christchurch .Christ Church , is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
, in 1946. His main subject was Mathematics, but he also read widely in English literature, philosophy and history.
Between leaving university and just before national service, he took time out to catalogue the library of the late Bishop Indjian (died 1950), and read a number of his books on Turkish history for the first time.
Tahta did national service in the RAF from 1950 to 1952, then after a brief foray into
journalismJournalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and comment via a widening spectrum of media. These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and even, more recently, the mobile phone...
, returned to Rossall School in 1954, where he began teaching English and History, but gradually moved into mathematics teaching.
In 1955, he moved to teach mathematics at St Albans School,
HertfordshireHertfordshire , abbreviated Herts, is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford....
, where the young
Stephen HawkingStephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is a British theoretical physicist. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes...
was a pupil. When asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named "Mr Tahta" ; Tahta remained at St Albans for six years before taking up the post of lecturer in mathematics education at St Luke's College,
ExeterThe University of Exeter is a university in the South West of England. Most of its activities are located in the city of Exeter, Devon, where it is the principal higher education institution...
, in 1961. By 1974, he was a Mathematics tutor at the
University of ExeterThe University of Exeter is a university in the South West of England. Most of its activities are located in the city of Exeter, Devon, where it is the principal higher education institution...
's School of Education at Thornlea, on the New North Road. In 1978, the School of Education merged with St Luke's College to form the University's Department of Education. He remained there until his retirement in late 1981.
In the 1970s he was involved in the ATV television programme of mathematics for schools entitled 'Leapfrogs' (produced and directed by Paul Martin) and promoted visual approaches to mathematics. His paper "On Geometry" argued that
geometricalGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
approaches to mathematics could not be reduced to
algebraAlgebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and the things which can be constructed from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures...
ic approaches. In line with this thinking, he produced the ATM book
Geometric Images, and co-authored
Images of Infinity with Ray Hemmings. The Leapfrogs group of Tahta and Hemmings, together with David Sturgess, Leo Rogers and Derick Last also produced hands-on teaching materials including workbooks for the
polycubethumb|200px|right|A [[Chirality |chiral]] pentacubeIn recreational mathematics, a polycube is a polyform with a cube as the base form. Consequently they are the three-dimensional analogues of the planar polyominos...
. He also drew upon insights into
pedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
in the writings of Mary Boole on mathematics education.
After retirement, he went to teach in
AmericaThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
, and became a tutor for the
Open UniversityThe Open University is the distance learning university founded and funded by the UK Government. It is notable for having an open entry policy, i.e. students' previous academic achievements are not taken into account for entry to most undergraduate courses...
.
His last book was
The Fifteen Schoolgirls about
Thomas KirkmanThomas Penyngton Kirkman was a British mathematician. An important expositor of group theory in English, he is now remembered principally for a combinatorial problem which bears his name, Kirkman's schoolgirl problem. In contemporary terms, he proved an existence theorem for Steiner triple systems...
, known for the
Kirkman's schoolgirl problemKirkman's schoolgirl problem is a problem in combinatorics proposed by Thomas Kirkman in 1850 as Query VI in The Lady's and Gentleman's Diary...
, a problem in combinatorics, which also delved into the byways of Victorian amateur mathematics.
In its obituary,
The GuardianThe Guardian is a British daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation .The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers...
newspaper described Dick as "one of the outstanding mathematics teachers of his generation", who was notable for having inspired physicist Stephen Hawking. The Guardian commented on his death that "He was a wise and generous man who inspired love and an increase of intellectual energy in everyone who came within his ambit.".
Books
- A Boolean anthology: Selected writings of Mary Boole—on mathematical education, 1972 (Compiled by D.G. Tahta).
- Tahta, D. and Brookes, W. (1966) "The Genesis of Mathematical Activity", in W. Brookes (Ed.) The Development of Mathematical Activity in Children: the place of the problem in this development
- Images of Infinity, with Ray Hemmings
- Ararat Associations
- The Fifteen Schoolgirls
Magazine Articles
- Tahta, D. (1981a) ‘About geometry’, for the Learning of Mathematics, 1(1), 2-9.
- Tahta, D. (1981b) ‘Some thoughts arising from the new Nicolet films’, Mathematics Teaching, 94, 25-9.
- Tahta, D. (1985) ‘On notation’, Mathematics Teaching, 112, 49-51.
- Tahta, D. (1988) ‘Lucas turns in his grave’, in Pimm, D. (ed.) Mathematics, Teachers and Children, London, Hodder and Stoughton, pp. 306-12.
- Tahta, D. (1990a) ‘Is there a geometrical imperative?’, Mathematics Teaching, 129, 20-9.
- Tahta, D. (1990b) ‘Gratifying usefulness’, Mathematics Teaching, 132, 57-8.
- Tahta, D. (1991) ‘Understanding and desire’, in Pimm, D. and Love, E. (eds) Teaching and Learning School Mathematics, London, Hodder and Stoughton, pp. 221-46.
- Tahta, D. (1992) ‘Curricular configurations’, Micromath, 8(2), 37-9.