Nov 27, 2022
Quem não desconfia de si mesmo não merece a confiança dos outros.
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan
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Quem não desconfia de si mesmo não merece a confiança dos outros.
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan
MYSTERIES OF THE MAN WHO COUNTED
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"A mathematics professor with a mysterious pseudonym filled my imagination with legends of the desert, the heavens, the earth, and a thousand unending tales told by the Arab people. These stories would later help to shape my most well-known book: The Alquimista. I am speaking of Júlio César de Mello e Souza, known by all his readers as Malba Tahan.”
PAULO COELHO
(SPEECH UPON HIS ACCEPTANCE TO THE BRAZILIAN ACADEMY OF LETTERS, 10/28/2002).
Though readers around the world enjoy his fantastic Eastern tales, most of them do not know that Malba Tahan was the pseudonym of Júlio Cesar de Mello e Souza, the most celebrated Brazilian mathematics professor, who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1895.
LEGENDS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH As a child, enthralled by The Thousand and One Nights he fell in love with Eastern culture and knowledge.
At the age of 23, he decided to systematize his knowledge by studying that culture to later use its legendary stories to teach mathematics.
In The Man Who Counted, Enjoyable and Curious Mathematics, Great Fantasies of Mathematics, and others books, he takes the reader on riveting adventures while rying to solve algebra and arithmetic problems.
A teacher for 60 years, Malba Tahan is considered the forefather of a new sort of pedagogy.
Innovative teacher and astoundingly articulate lecturer, his exceptional knowledge still inspires new generations of educators.
A man ahead of his times, he published more than 100 books.
His ideas are still novel and startlingly relevant. He was the “inventor” of a form of teaching where imagination and science work together to build knowledge. Just as Jostein Gaarder teaches philosophy in his novel Sophie’s World, Malba Tahan makes learning mathematics easy and fun through the stories in The Man Who Counted.
"The mathematics professor must know the recreational side of numbers, the strange paradoxes and lively episodes associated with this science.
Hence, a good teacher must present mathematics with charm and simplicity, making it light and pleasant for the student; it must become a science full of appeal and color.” PROF. JULIO CÉSAR DE MELLO E SOUZA
More than just a pseudonym, Malba Tahan was a character created by engineer and primary school teacher Júlio César in the 1920s, when he realised how difficult it was to get his stories published in Rio de Janeiro newspapers.
He claimed that the stories were written by Malba Tahan, whose full name was Ali Iezid Izz-Edim Ibn Salim Hank Malba Tahan.
A master storyteller, the Arab writer Malba Tahan was born in 1885 in the village of Muzalit, on the Arabian Peninsula, near the city of Mecca, one of the holy places of the Muslim religion, Islam. At the invitation of Emir Abd el-Azziz ben Ibrahim, he took up the position of qemah (mayor) of the Arab city of El-Medina. He studied in Cairo and Constantinople. At the age of 27, he received a large inheritance from his father and embarked on a long journey through Japan, Russia and India.
He died in 1921, fighting for the liberation of a tribe in Central Arabia.
Under his pseudonym, Julius Caesar proposed problems in arithmetic and algebra with the same lightness and charm as the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. Under his real identity, he was a creative and daring teacher who went far beyond the exclusively theoretical and expository teaching of his time, of which he was a fierce critic. ‘The mathematics teacher is generally a sadist,’ he accused. ‘He takes pleasure in complicating everything.’
Tales of the Thousand and One Nights was the first in a series of writings by Malba Tahan for the newspaper. Meticulous, Júlio César even provided a fictional translator. Malba Tahan's books always came with ‘translation and notes by Prof. Breno Alencar Bianco’. Malba Tahan, in Arabic, means ‘the Miller of Malba’. Malba is an oasis and Tahan is the surname of a student, Maria Zechsuk Tahan. Out of deference to President Getúlio Vargas, the professor (pictured here teaching a class) was allowed to use the pseudonym on his identity card. He liked to mark schoolwork with the stamp ‘Malba Tahan’ written in Arabic characters. ‘He was far ahead of his time,’ says respected São Paulo mathematician and professor Antônio José Lopes Bigode, an authority on Malba Tahan. ‘Reviving his teaching methods could revolutionise education,’ he believes. ‘Even today, traditional mathematics teaching is responsible for half of all students repeating a year.’
In class, Júlio César never gave zeros or flunked anyone. ‘Why give a zero when there are so many numbers?’ he would say. ‘Giving a zero is foolish.’ The teacher tasked the best students in the class with helping the weakest ones. ‘By June and July, everyone was at the average level,’ he assured in his testimony to the Museum of Image and Sound.
‘Today, recreational activities are highly valued, but at that time they were seen as heresy,’ observes mathematics professor Sérgio Lorenzato, 58, from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). Lorenzato, who was a student of Júlio César, keeps the notebook he used to take notes in class as a relic. ‘He said that the notebook had to reflect the student's life,’ recalls Lorenzato. ‘And he encouraged us to paste pictures, magazine and newspaper clippings, and even corrected tests into its pages.’
Charismatic, Júlio César charmed his students. But not everyone was comfortable with his informality. ‘The traditionalists were absolutely opposed to Malba Tahan and his interest in the everyday aspects of mathematics,’ explains Valdemar Vello, editor of textbooks at Scipione publishing house.
Júlio César was a teacher of history, geography and physics until he devoted himself to mathematics. His fame as an educator spread and he was invited to give lectures throughout the country. The last one was in Recife, on 18 June 1974, when he spoke to teacher training students about the art of storytelling. Back at the hotel, he felt ill and died, probably of a heart attack.
Júlio César left instructions for his funeral. He did not want people to mourn him. Quoting the composer Noel Rosa, he explained why: ‘Black clothes are vanity/ for those who dress formally/ my mourning is longing/ and longing has no colour’.
Tales to Solve Problems
Malba Tahan was one of the most original and popular Brazilian writers of all times.
An inspiration to many narrators, his stories are still widely studied; for thousands of readers from around the world, they are an instrument to solve problems. He received prizes from the Brazilian Academy of Letters and earned the admiration of major authors like the Brazilian Monteiro Lobato and the Argentinian poet and storywriter Jorge Luís Borges, who deeply appreciated his Eastern-inspired stories. The Man Who Counted, his most famous work, has been translated into more than twelve languages. In it, he combines as no one had ever before narrative talent, life wisdom and mathematical knowledge.
Paulo Coelho recalls that, when he was a boy, he read a book by Malba Tahan entitled Maktub and thought: "Should I do the same?”
The Ruination of the Neighbor
MALBA TAHAN ILLUSTRATES THE DANGERS OF THE WORD:
A woman so insisted that her young neighbor was a thief that the boy was arrested. Days later, it was discovered that he was innocent; now released from prison, the boy decided to take the woman to justice.
“My words were not so pernicious,” she told the judge.
“Fair enough,” said the judge. “Today, when you go home, write down all the bad things you said about the boy. Then tear up the paper, and toss the pieces in the road. Come back tomorrow to hear your sentence.” The woman did as she was told and came back the next day.
“The accused will be absolved if she brings me all the pieces of paper that yesterday she scattered about the road. If not, she will be sentenced to a year of prison,” declared the judge.
“But it can’t be so! The wind has certainly blown the pieces away!”
“Just as a simple passing comment can be taken by the wind and ruin a man’s honor. Later, it is impossible to repair the damage that has been done.” And he sent the woman to jail.
"Here lies a lofty truth, my friend! Learn to engrave in stone the favors that have been given you, the help you have received, the words of affection, care and encouragement you have heard. Yet learn to write in sand the insults, ingratitude, disloyalty and bitter ironies that have wounded you as you have made your way through life. Learn to engrave in stone and write in sand… and you will be happy.” MALBA TAHAN
HIS PATH
1895: Son of João de Deus de Mello e Souza and Carolina Carlos de Mello e Souza, Júlio Cesar de Mello e Souza was born in Rio de Janeiro on May 6.
1908: At the age of 13, he began to write his own magazine, ERRE. Always handwritten, the magazine existed for two years. He came up with his first pseudonym “Salomón IV.”
1918: Under the pseudonym R. S. Slady, he began to publish in the newspaper O Imparcial.
1919: He began to study Eastern culture in order to use its legendary stories to teach mathematics.
1925: Mello e Souza created Malba Tahan, an Eastern writer that captivated Brazilian readers with the stories he published in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper A Noite.
1929: Writer Malba Tahan became a publishing phenomenon.
1932: Mello e Souza, along with Cecil Thiré and Euclides Roxo, began to publish innovative texts on mathematics teaching.
1938: The Man Who Counted, M. Tahan’s most famous book, was published.
1950/1974: He traveled around Brazil giving lectures and courses on the art of storytelling.
1974: At the age of 79, Professor Júlio Cesar de Mello e Souza died in Recife (state of Pernambuco), where he gave classes to professionals.
O homem que calculava - 1938
As proezas matemáticas do calculista persa Beremiz Samir - o Homem que Calculava - tornaram-se lendárias na antiga Arábia, encantando reis, poetas, xeques e sábios. Neste livro, Malba Taham relata as incríveis aventuras deste homem singular e suas soluções fantásticas para problemas aparentemente insolúveis. O Homem que Calculava - um clássico brasileiro, já traduzido para o inglês e espanhol - mantém o valor pedagógico comum a toda a obra de Malba Tahan, que, sem perder o clima de aventura e romance da terra das mil e uma noites, ensina matemática por meio da ficção.
Plongez avec 'L'Homme qui Calculait' dans une aventure mathématique familiale autour de l'énigme des 35 chameaux.
(...) os homens mais avisados iludem-se, não só diante da aparência enganadora dos números, mas também com a falsa modéstia dos ambiciosos. Infeliz aquele que toma sobre os ombros o compromisso de uma dívida cuja grandeza não pode avaliar com a tábua de cálculo de sua própria argúcia. Mais avisado é o que muito pondera e pouco promete!
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan
A inveja quando se apodera de um homem abre em sua alma caminho a todos os sentimentos desprezíveis e torpes.
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan
Quanta vez pedimos aquilo que possuímos e deixamos desaproveitado! Quanta vez sonhamos possuir aquilo que nunca poderá ser nosso!
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan
Dada a grande diversidade de temperamentos e caracteres, não nos é possível viver em paz com o próximo sem refrearmos a ira e cultivarmos a mansidão.
O Homem que Calculava – Malba Tahan