Professor Dr. Radu Gologan believes that the history of the region affects people’s way of thinking and their passion for mathematics. He stated this in an interview with Radio Romania Actualităită.

“Mathematics does not require a large investment in technology, and that was an advantage. In our history, the first great intellectuals with important doctoral degrees were mathematicians, one of them being Spiru Haret, the founder of modern Romanian education.

For a long time, I believed that brains were the same everywhere, but there seem to be areas on the world map where the propensity to think mathematically, to be interested in mathematics, and to be able to abstract better depends on the place and its history. It is clear that there is such a hotbed of intelligence in Eastern Europe, and perhaps history speaks for itself,” added Professor Hologhan.

An extraordinary merchant had only one starting state

“If you look into our history and into Romanian literature, you will meet characters a hundred or two hundred years ago, even without a book, who were exceptional from a mathematical point of view and trade accounts, this is the prerogative of the respective area. that it was primarily related to trade and history.

One of my great-great-grandfathers only had one primary grade where he barely learned to read, but he was an extraordinary cheese and cattle dealer.

From school, reading helped me understand the world, and the arithmetic exercises that my father gave me, both to me and to my brother, helped me to have a sharper mind before entering school,” says Professor Radu Gologan.

I was welcomed on the red carpet after winning the gold

This year, at the International Mathematics Olympiad in Oslo, Romania was ahead of all European countries – 5th place, with two gold and four silver medals.

“This performance was not a big surprise for us. Our young people study a lot, they are very disciplined from this point of view. Of course, they are very gifted mathematically, but without being in the socket every day, you will not achieve much, it is an intensive work that also involves mathematical research.

Probably, it is most similar with sports and music. If you haven’t trained for three or four days, for example, in the 100-meter freestyle, your productivity drops by a few hundredths or tenths. If you haven’t practiced playing the violin for two days, the concert will be worse than if you practice it every day,” said Professor Radu Gologan.

Romanian Olympians changed the image of the country abroad

“Romanian Olympians represent elite capital, and their biggest role in the last 30 years has been lobbying Romania. These children, when they studied in foreign universities, during the time when the world looked at us through the prism of social inequalities that happened after the 90s, they managed to change the perception.

It was they who changed the image of Romania. It seems to me quite normal that many very intelligent young Romanians are leaving the country.

At the moment we can offer them only a few universities where everything is very good (I am talking about the departments of mathematics, automation and computing at Politehnica Bucharest and several similar departments in the country), the children want something else for their future.

But none of them say: “I won’t come back”, but say “I will see if it will be good…”.

Recently, their merits have been recognized, children have begun to feel that they are valued. When I won the gold medal, I was greeted on the red carpet from the plane, as a great politician is received. These gestures are very important.

The best ones are at the Faculty of Automation, not all of them graduate. Although they are very small, they are still children. Their maturity in terms of belonging to Romanian society will be seen later,” said Professor Gologan.

The Romanian mathematician is no longer alone

“For the last 30 years, Romanian mathematicians have had much better results than in the other 50 years, when we could boast of very good results. At the moment, the Romanian mathematician is no longer alone due to the fact that there are other Romanian mathematicians in all the important positions in the mathematical research centers of the world.

The number of young people who want to be a mathematics teacher has increased. In pre-university education, it is still not enough compared to the existing needs, in the university sphere, things are going better. But this is still a very big deficit,” the professor claims.

More than 60% of Romanian intellectuals say that mathematics did not help them

“A child should not hear in any family, even when there are difficulties with solving a first-class problem, words like: “I was also bad at math, I didn’t like it very much and I didn’t do well.” deal, let go!”

This should completely disappear from the language of the family, on the contrary, the child must be encouraged to think. Especially in small classes, the child should in no case be directed to individual learning of mathematics, but left to work independently and help parents.

60 percent of Romanian intellectuals believe that what they learned in mathematics did not help them, and they did not like mathematics very much, and they had the impression – sometimes wrongly – that there was no need for so much mathematics.

When you have a child who you think is mathematically minded and gifted (this is usually revealed in the preschool years, when children start playing with numbers), it is clear that their mind is good at math and they need to be helped in some way.

I buy him an interesting math textbook, look for a good lesson for small classes on the Internet, etc., the teacher concluded. Radu Gologan is a Doctor of Philosophy, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, and he is the president of the Society for Mathematical Sciences.