Lucienne Félix
Lucienne Félix (1901-1994)
"An experienced teacher of mathematics, the author of numerous didactical works and textbooks in mathematics translated into numerouslanguages and aimed at readers at all levels, an indefatigable promoter of reforms in the teaching of mathematics who took part in conferences in many countries, she also played an improtant rôle in the emergence of the Didactique of Mathematics."
Thus the editor of her posthumous work "Reflections of an experienced mathematician of the 20th century", and he adds "Lucienne Félix delivers here with freshness the memories of her youth, her hopes, her life at the Sèvres School where she worked with the greatest intellectuals of the early 20th century, her difficulties with the administration, under Vichy, to the doorstep of the camps ... and her return where she discovered the worst. She saves herself by devoting herself entirely to mathematics and the heaching of it. A woman, a mathematics teacher, and a Jew, Lucienne Félix was involved in three important combats of her century. She bears witness here to the interlaced consequences of these three involvements.
It was only at the end of her life that the appearance of "Didactique of Mathematics permitted Lucienne Félix to recognize her place as an indispensible link in the genesis of this discipline. A simple inventory of the types of actions that she carried out in her life would suffice to indicate that she was essentially a didactician of mathematics. But she was far more than a precursor and a sponsor. Her deep love for mathematics, its knowledge and its ideas, influenced numerous readers who were thus able to harvest a part of the mthematical heritage that came rto her from Lebesgue. It was in listening to her, in discussing her ideas and in attempting to test them that the first didacticians began their work. "Because these are our patients and many observations that sowed the seeds of this new science", she said in her farewell to the Association of public school teachers of mathematics. GB
Read Bibliographie de Lucienne Félix
Roland BRASSEUR, Retired teacher of special mathematicsat the Chrestien-de-TroyesLycée (Troyes) and associate member of the Henry Poincaré Archives (Nancy) recently published in the Bulletin of theUnion des Professeurs de Spéciales (Mathématiques et Sciences Physiques) n° 236 (octobre 2011) two biographies, one deoted to Lucienne FÉLIX (the other to Albert DE SAINT GERMAIN).
He has kindly premitted me to make his text available on this site. Readers will find in this detailed biography a precise and documented account of the professional (and tumultuous) life of Lucienne Félix.
To read or download the article: Biographie de Lucienne Félix par R. Brasseur