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Development.
“WHAT does it all add up to?” was the title of a farewell lecture by the late Nigerian mathematician, Professor A Olubumo, when he retired from the University of Ibadan in the mid 1990s after lecturing there all his professional life.
He had started that profession with a firm belief that Nigeria, being such a big country endowed with many natural resources, would embrace mathematics and accelerate its development better than the smaller European countries.
Now he was reflecting on the reality of his experience, far from the dreams he started with.
I was reminded of that lecture when I received the sad news that Dr Josephat Martin Harvey, a talented Zimbabwean mathematician, had passed on quietly in his sleep in the morning hours of 18th February 2011.
Martin is late but I know his works will live forever.
I have been privileged, not only to know Martin, but even more, to see him in action; I have seen him displaying a very unusual talent – a gift of nature, a gift from God – where he would enter into deep thought and end up acting like a prophet with new ideas of mathematics flowing through his pen as new mathematical theorems, theorems that are elsewhere unfounded except under his name.
That is what Martin left us to study and build on.
I am humbled to write this obituary on Martin.
Martin was born on 12th November 1949 and was the eldest in a family of three children, all brought up by a hard-working mother who strived to send all her children to school, through the usual scramble against racism.
Being the eldest child and with their mother having to work long hours every day, Martin had to cook for and look after his younger siblings.
From that early experience, he acquired good organisational skills – qualities that continued to characterise his approach to work throughout his profession.
He also developed a strong sense of responsibility; indeed I could see several members of the audience moved to tears as his daughter, his son, his surviving sister and close relatives, one after another, all underlined his love: “Martin would never let you down” was their common message at his burial service.
His mother worked in South Africa, in Malawi and of course in Zimbabwe, taking the family with her throughout.
Martin took advantage of that exposure to learn as much as possible from what each place could offer.
For instance he became fluent in the languages he encountered: Shona, Zulu, Ndebele, Chewa, English and French.
He did his primary school education at Mbare and Empandeni Mission in Zimbabwe and also in Malawi at Henry Henderson Institute over the years 1956 to 1962.
This was followed by secondary school education in Malawi at Blantyre Secondary School from 1963 to 1964 and then in Zimbabwe at St Ignatius College from 1965 to 1968.
It was from St Ignatius College that news of an exceptionally talented student of mathematics started spreading to other secondary schools all over Zimbabwe.
There, Martin obtained the Cambridge School Certificate with a first division in nine subjects in 1966 and then passed the Cambridge Higher School Certificate with Grades A in Physics, A in Pure Mathematics and D in Applied Mathematics in 1968.
Not only did he do so well in mathematics, but he was the first student in the country to pass A-level mathematics as a double course, i.e two separate mathematics subjects.
At that time most students entered university after passing mathematics with low grades: E, D and good ones would get C.
It was considered exceptional to get a B and an A was simply a rarity.
Performing so well in mathematics at a time racism excluded black students from the subject and insults were commonly levelled at them through phrases such as “Blacks cannot think in three-dimensions” turned Martin into a hero of the deprived black students all over the country.
Martin was adored, became a source of pride and was commonly cited as an example to show that black students could do well in mathematics.
Martin did his BSc from 1969 to 1971, majoring in Mathematics and Physics, winning prizes for the best science student every year and passed the degree with an Upper Second Class.
In 1972 he became the first student to study for the (one year) BSc Special Honours in Mathematics which he passed with a First Class.
With that exceptional achievement, Martin could have gone for graduate studies at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or any other university and a scholarship would not have been a problem to obtain, despite the racial discrimination at the time.
However, his sense of responsibility to look after the family dominated his decision and thus resolved to pursue his profession locally.
This should be understandable for then Martin had married a beautiful wife, Alda Winny (née Tanyongana); she could not have let him out of her sight for years.
Fortunately, despite the racism then prevailing in the country and in some sections of the University of Zimbabwe, the Department of Mathematics had impartial staff that genuinely sought to promote teaching and research in mathematics and was actively seeking to attract any students talented in the subject.
Martin was therefore readily employed, becoming the first black member of staff, first as a teaching assistant from 1972 to 1974 and as lecturer from 1975 onwards.
Alongside his teaching responsibilities he embarked on research for a DPhil degree in Mathematics under the supervision of Dr Gavin Hitchcock.
Apart from a brief research visit to the University of St Andrews in 1978 to 1979, Martin did most of his research at the University of Zimbabwe.
It was a lonesome experience, with only his supervisor and one other pure mathematician, Professor Alastair Stewart, available to exchange ideas meaningfully on his research.
Mathematicians generally need collaborating company to sustain intensive levels of thinking needed to inspire the brain to come up with solutions to problems under investigation.
That is particularly critical at the initial level of doing research.
Despite that isolation, Martin succeeded and became the first person to receive a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Zimbabwe in 1980.
That laid the foundation for continued research with his results published in various international journals of mathematics and also presented at a wide range of conferences.
Martin’s published works are in the mathematics field of Topology with an emphasis on Category Theory.
This is a Zimbabwean who has raised the country’s flag internationally for indeed it should not be surprising to find that every good university in the world is likely to house some of Martin’s published results.
Thus Martin’s mathematics can be found in universities in Africa, North America, Asia, China, Europe, Russia, etc.
Martin also served the University of Zimbabwe as a member of various committees and related administrative positions.
Following our national independence in 1980, the University of Zimbabwe naturally faced challenges of transformation with black scholars having to be accommodated, with all appointments based on merit and no discrimination.
Martin was unanimously elected Dean of the Faculty of Science in 1984.
That shows the level of trust scholars in the Faculty of Science had in him. Martin became the first black to hold that position in the university.
Though the university provides rules and regulations for running its faculties, Martin sought to improve efficiency by producing a Dean’s manual that subsequent deans found vital to apply and continue to use to this day.
I joined the University of Zimbabwe soon after our national independence in 1980 and found Martin a highly motivated colleague in enhancing mathematics and its relevance to development.
Though our fields of specialisation where different, there were common areas on which to exchange views.
These were areas that fed well into our independent research activities.
We both viewed mathematics in a very broad manner encompassing Abstract and Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Mathematical Physics, Statistics and Computer Science.
We dreamt of building a School of Mathematics encompassing all these disciplines and saw the School, one day, becoming the heart of Mathematical Sciences in Southern Africa where scholars would also engage in problem-solving of issues of national and regional development
We even wrote a joint paper highlighting how we saw this evolving and presented it at the Inaugural Conference of the Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association (SAMSA) held at the University of Botswana in 1981.
I did not realise that our discussions on the wider applications of mathematics would get Martin carried away to the point of changing his career path.
He got interested in applications of mathematics to finance and ultimately studied Actuarial Science and eventually became one of the few actuaries Zimbabwe has produced.
Martin retired from the University of Zimbabwe in 1985 to begin his actuarial science career with Old Mutual, later Zimnat and then Southampton Assurance Company.
Actuarial Science, being an applied field of mathematics, relies on logic and thrives on respect for certain fundamentals.
The collapse of the economic fundamentals in the 2000 years frustrated the role of an actuary and Martin left the country to join the University of Western Cape as a senior lecturer in mathematics.
He held that position till his death.
Alongside all his professional activities, Martin was a poet and he wrote extensively.
He was an artist and produced oil paintings and played the jazz flute.
He read, thought and scribbled his thoughts on Philosophy inspired by his belief on the convergence of religions. He saw himself as a philosopher in every sense of the word.
At the time of his death Martin was busy compiling into book form his poetry, short stories and writings on philosophy – a challenging assignment that I hope members of the family will endeavour to complete.
Martin was blessed to have 5 children: Jabulani, Bongani, Marcia and the late Tulani and Vumani.
His wife, Winny, his sister Lucy Sibongile Mombeshora, his mother and six grand children are among the surviving members of Martin’s immediate family. Now Martin is late. We bade farewell to him at the burial of his body in Harare on 28th February 2011.
Will his life story inspire our scientific community, our young students of mathematics, our universities and indeed all Zimbabweans?
How can that be assured of happening?
The British mathematician, Maclaurin, who discovered mathematical series that are now taught in A-level mathematics, was a professor at the University of Aberdeen in the 1720s. Today the small lecture theatre he used is the university’s eyecup.
Whenever there is a distinguished visiting mathematician to give a lecture, the whole audience is made to squeeze into the small lecture room and hold the lecture there despite the existence of better modern lecture theatres nearby.
The university also teaches mathematical series more intensively than is normally done in most universities -just to raise and keep the tradition of series in the memory of Maclaurin.
Will Zimbabweans do the same or something else in memory of Martin?
I trust that what Martin left behind constitutes a good foundation to build an to answer the question, “What does it all add up to?”
Martin, rest in peace.