2014 CMS Winter Meeting
McMaster University, December 5 - 8, 2014
Adrien Pouliot Award and Lecture
- FRÉDÉRIC GOURDEAU, Université Laval
Mathematics, education and society: a fascinating journey [PDF]
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Receiving the Adrien Pouliot award is a great honor. It is also very special for me. First, because Adrien Pouliot was a mathematics professor here at Université Laval and played a key role in the creation of the Department of mathematics, being its first Director in 1939. I heard many stories about the man himself, and the engineering building at Laval is named after him. Secondly, on a personal level, I owe Adrien Pouliot a great deal more. It is rather indirect, but here it goes. A cousin of mine is married to one of the grand-children of Adrien Pouliot. Together, they established a bar in Québec city, many years ago, and this bar is where I met my wife. I don’t know if the existence of this bar was a necessary condition for us to meet, but it certainly played a role!
The similarity between this little anecdote and my journey in mathematics education is that both are about people, and as such are personal and professional. Of course, this talk will be about mathematics and education, and the CMS as well as the Association Québécoise des Jeux Mathématiques (AQJM), the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG/GCEDM) and the Association Mathématique du Québec (AMQ) will feature prominently in it. But it will also be about the journey and about the people involved in this journey.
