My father, Hugh Burkhardt, who has died aged 88, was an educator and visionary in the field of mathematics education. Through his work as director of the Shell Centre for Mathematical Education at Nottingham University, and books such as The Real World and Mathematics (1981), Hugh helped millions of maths teachers help their students to appreciate mathematics and use it in their daily lives.
A theoretical physicist for 16 years, Hugh became interested during the 1960s in the teaching of mathematics. Over four decades he drove the evolution of the field from a set of formal academic techniques applied to contrived problems, to a range of practical methods that could be applied creatively to real-world problem-solving.
Born into a scientific family in Manchester, Hugh was the son of Carol (nee Bell), a mathematics teacher before marriage, and George Burkhardt, a chemistry professor. After Manchester grammar school, he studied physics at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 1956.
He began his academic career as a theoretical physicist at Birmingham University, with a year at UCLA in the US (1968), and two years at Cern in Geneva (1964-72).
In 1976 he was appointed professor of mathematical education at Nottingham University, and director of its Shell Centre for Mathematical Education. There, Hugh championed the role of “educational designer” in changing the teaching of mathematics.
However, he knew that creating new methods and proving them empirically was only half the battle. The challenge was to drive adoption by the great number of teachers subject to local incentives and constraints.
In 1993, in response to the influence of “high stakes” public examinations, he introduced the acronym WYTIWYG, “What You Test Is What You Get”, and this slowly became accepted by policymakers and exam boards. Exams changed to assess higher-level skills, such as solving non-routine problems and interpreting graphs of real-world data.
To help teachers reinforce these skills, the centre produced “formative assessment” lessons through the US-based Mathematics Assessment Project. It is estimated there have been more than 7 million teacher downloads of these lessons, such as the dice game to aid learning of probability concepts.
As emeritus professor at Nottingham, Hugh remained active into his late 80s, directing and contributing to many research projects. His co-authored book with Daniel Pead and Kaye Stacey, Learning and Teaching for Mathematical Literacy, was published in February.
Outside work, he loved French food, wine and classical music. He played the oboe with the Bavicchi wind quintet, performing for more than 40 years.
Hugh married Diana Farmer, a computer science lecturer, in 1955; they had three children, Roger, Ian and me. The marriage ended in divorce in the mid-80s. From 1990 he was in a relationship with Jeanne Downton, a bereavement counsellor.
She and his children survive him.
