Mathematics in South Africa

Summary: Southern Africa is the home of ancient mathematical artifacts and modern mathematical innovations.

Southern Africa comprises the five nations of the Southern African Customs Union: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland. Colonization led to significant European populations, especially in South Africa and Namibia.

The oldest known mathematical artifact is the Lebombo bone, discovered in a rock shelter in the Lebombo Mountains near the South Africa/Swaziland border. There is evidence of the cave having been inhabited continuously beginning some 200,000 years ago, and the bone itself is estimated to be 35,000 years old. The Lebombo bone is a fragment of baboon fibula with 29 notches, most likely used as a tally stick—a notched object used to keep track of quantities. In this case it may have been a menstrual calendar.

Historically, the Dutch and British were particularly influential in this region. For example, the nineteenth-century Boer (also known as Afrikaner) community established the Boer States, including Transvaal and the Orange Free State. It has been documented that the Boer farmers, who were largely descendants of Dutch and some other European settlers, relied heavily on education at home. The migration of large numbers of predominantly British settlers into South Africa in the nineteenth century saw the establishment of more schools and later, universities in the European style. The mathematics heritage of southern Africa reflects both the diversity of the native cultures and the effects of this European colonialism.

South African Mathematicians

One early South African mathematician was Francis Guthrie (1831–1899), who proposed the Four Color Problem. It stemmed from a problem he first explored as a student in which only four colors could be used to denote the counties of England, and no two counties sharing a border could have the same color. Guthrie was born in London but immigrated to South Africa, where he worked as both a mathematician and a botanist. Mathematician Stanley Skewes (1899–1988), who was a faculty member at the University of South Africa and grew up near Johannesburg, postulated his Skewes number, which is an important concept in number theory.

Within South Africa, one well-known mathematician is Chris Brink, who grew up in a town on the edge of the Kalahari Desert and studied at Johannesburg. He earned a degree in mathematics before earning a scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where he completed his doctoral thesis on algebraic logic.

Returning to South Africa, he worked on Boolean modules and was vice-chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch from 2002 until 2007. Outside of the country of South Africa, another early mathematics Ph.D. from the southern Africa region is Abraham Busa Xaba. He was born in Swaziland in 1938 and earned his Ph.D. in 1984. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Maintaining an optimal steady state in the disturbances.”

During the latter years of the twentieth century, some South African mathematicians also became known for their work overseas. For example, Lionel Cooper (1915–1979) left the country for political reasons. He grew up in Cape Town and won a Rhodes scholarship to study mathematics at Oxford University. Afterward, he served as a lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, and at Cardiff University, then became head of the Mathematics Department at Chelsea College, London. Abraham Manie Adelstein (1916–1992) was born in South Africa but left to live in England in 1961, where he became a leading medical statistician.

Organizations

As well as these important role models, there have been many attempts to encourage collaboration and development of mathematics in the southern African region. The Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Botswana. Its serves as a forum for the sharing of mathematical ideas for the countries in southern Africa as well as some neighboring countries that may be more broadly defined as being in the southern portion of the African continent.

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences was founded in 2003 as a partnership of six universities: Cambridge University (England), University of Cape Town (South Africa), Oxford University (England), Université Paris-Sud XI (France), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), and University of the Western Cape (South Africa). Its three primary goals are: promoting mathematics and science in Africa; recruiting and training talented students and teachers of science and mathematics; and building capacity for educational, research, and technological initiatives in Africa. The South African Mathematics Olympiad is held each year for high school students, and teams from southern Africa have participated in the International Mathematical Olympiad since 1992.

Bibliography

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Gerdes, Paulus, and Ahmed Djebbar. Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An Annotated Bibliography. Cape Town, South Africa: African Mathematical Union, 2004.

Simkins, C. E. W., with Andrew Paterson. Learner Performance in South Africa: Social and Economic Determinants of Success in Language and Mathematics. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2005.

Vithal, Renuka, Jill Adler, and Christine Keitel. Researching Mathematics Education in South Africa: Perspectives, Practices and Possibilities. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC Press, 2005.