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.
