Influential Mathematics Educator Izaak Wirszup Has Died

February 7, 2008

Mathematician Izaak Wirszup (University of Chicago), who played a key role in alerting the U.S. to the importance of improving mathematics education, died January 30. A Holocaust survivor, he was 93.

"When I remained alive," he recalled, "the sole survivor of a very large family, I had to confirm in my own conscience, and before the memory of all my dear ones, that I was doing something valuable, something truly good and doing it to the best of my abilities, with a life that had been spared me completely by chance."

“Izaak Wirszup was a most inspiring example of courage in enduring and overcoming the terrible challenges of his life,” said Robert Fefferman, Dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. “Rather than responding by bitterness, he chose to dedicate his life to loving his family and friends, and turning his tremendous creative energy toward wonderful contributions to the improvement of mathematics education in America, and to the betterment of this University.”

In 1979, for instance, as director of the Survey of Recent East European Mathematical Literature, Wirszup sent a report to the NSF comparing the expectations of mathematics curricula in the United States with the higher demands of Soviet science and mathematics education. The report reached President Carter, whose administration then initiated a re-evaluation of the adequacy of American schools. In 1983, Wirszup helped establish the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, which has become the nation’s largest university-based curriculum project for kindergarten through 12th-grade mathematics. An estimated 3.5 to 4 million U.S. students now use UCSMP materials.

In 1996 Wirszup received the NCTM's Lifetime Achievement Medal for Leadership, Teaching, and Service in Mathematics Education. Jack Price, president of NCTM, said, “We need only look at Izaak, at his determination, commitment and unfaltering belief that you can do it to see a successful teacher who has made a difference.”

Source: University of Chicago News