I received some sad news yesterday from Hungary: my high school math teacher, Gusztáv Reményi, died last week, at the age of 88. He was a very kind teacher. Our class was a specialized mathematics class, and we were supposed to be the best in the country. In this class, being good at math didn’t just mean that, say, you got sent to national math competitions; you were expected to win them. Perhaps this made Mr. Reményi’s job easier, but I suspect that he would have done well with less talented pupils, too, if not because of his teaching style then due to his personality. If you met him and remembered nothing else, you’d have remembered his smile. I last met him a few years ago, at our high school reunion. He was old, he was frail, but the huge smile was still there, just as I remembered.
Feb 162009