Interview with a mathematician. A human mathematician.
by Tawanda Gwena
Professor Heneri Dzinotyiweyi is probably the most
successful mathematician produced by Zimbabwe to date. He was born on March 15,
1950. We skip the next few years of his life, only pausing to say that he went
to Fletcher High School for Form 6. Then we come to his university life which
started in 1971 when he enrolled at the then University of Rhodesia. There he
first studied Mathematics, Physics and Geology, and then went on to Honours in
Mathematics.
Unfortunately, due to the 1973 disturbances following
student demonstrations against racism in the country and at the university in
particular (student demonstrations here have a very long history!) he was
arrested and imprisoned for the latter half of the year and had to complete his
degree in private study outside Harare in 1974. He was the second (the first
was J M Harvey, mentioned later) Honours student in Mathematics here, having
been taught by people such as Gavin Hitchcock, Gordon Lampitt and Alastair
Stewart, all still in the Department.
Immediately after his first degree he went to Botswana where
he got a teaching post in August 1974. In December of that year he won a
scholarship to the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, where he did his MSc in
Mathematics in one year, and then moved on to work for his PhD in the area of
functional analysis, at the same university. Unfortunately, when some way into
his PhD project he discovered that his research topic had already been done, so
had to turn to something else. He completed his PhD in 1977, and was awarded a
Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship to work at the Catholic University in
Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
His first teaching post was at the University of Nairobi,
but in mid-1979 he left to join the liberation struggle, which ended in 1980,
and then he came back home and lectured at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). In
1983 he rose to the rank of Associate Professor, and in 1987 he became Full
Professor. He was chairman of the Mathematics Department from 1983 until 1991,
when he was elected Dean of Science, the position he holds today.
So far he has written many mathematical papers and two
books. One is a rather demanding first-year book entitled ``A First Course in
Mathematical Analysis'', and the other an extremely advanced book in the Pitman
Research Notes Series (#98) entitled ``The Analogue of the Group Algebra for
Topological Semigroups'', which is mainly aimed at PhD students and other
researchers in the field. He has visited 25 countries in the last 20 years.
Besides being an internationally respected mathematician, he is well known in
Zimbabwean industrial circles as he has served on the boards of several
companies and organizations.
Finally, we get to the interview.
Zimaths: Have you seen any changes in your time in the dept?
Dzino: There have been changes in the dept since my time.
Initially the department was mainly concentrating on pure mathematics. We then
developed the applied and statistics areas in the department. Because of this,
most of the Staff Development Fellowships (scholarships given to postgraduate
UZ students so that they can get higher degrees, usually outside Zimbabwe, and
also train to teach at the university) at that time went to applied mathematics
and statistics. The area of statistics eventually became big enough to become a
separate department.
Which people have been through the UZ?
At the time of developing staff capacity, we sent people
such as Dr D. P. Clemence (former chairman of maths), Dr Chareka (Chairman of
Statistics), Mr D. Vuma (Chairman of Maths), Dr Sibanda, Mr L. M. Mudehwe. Dr
N. Mudamburi, Prof L. M. Nyagura (Pro Vice Chancellor, former student of
Dzinotyiweyi himself). These are all people who went out of the country for
their further degrees and came back. There are others who are now abroad, doing
mathematics.
How many people have done their PhD here?
So far there has been only one --- Dr J M Harvey, who now
holds an executive management position with an insurance company. But he worked
part-time for the degree, while a full-time lecturer in the Mathematics
Department, and so took a long time to complete it. At the moment there are
three Zimbabweans in the department doing their PhDs here.
Is this the fault of the Department or University?
The main problem is that people here study in isolation. A
lot of people give up and leave, sometimes to study abroad. Outside Zimbabwe
the environment is better, and literature (books, papers and such-like, the
staple food of mathematicians) is more accessible.
For example, when I was studying at Aberdeen I was away for
a lot of the time, because I could go (and did go) to the other universities
which were around. This greatly helps in getting new ideas, and you advance
much faster, as you will be unlikely to re-do what someone else has already
done.
What about students who want to be mathematicians?
There are two things needed if you want to make it in
mathematics.
Have a very high standard of mathematical abililty.
Be able to pursue the subject to research level.
My belief is that a mathematician should be able to do any
other subject, except perhaps the experimental subjects, as they require
laboratory experience.
The point about being a mathematician is that you have the
nerve to be able to take up any challenge, however remote from the subject it
is. Actually it's more difficult for a mathematician to do research in maths
than in many other subjects. The problem is that the people in industry think
that the only people who are usable for the job are those specially trained in
that field. The challenge for industry is this: take on mathematicians who are
problem-solvers and can think clearly! Most institutions would benefit by
absorbing mathematics graduates.
If you look at industries elsewhere they are using
mathematicians a great deal. For example IBM has a lab in Munich which has
about 300 scientists, of which the majority are mathematicians (a lot of
mathematicians are employed in American labs, such as Bell Labs and Watson
Research Center -- Ed).
If a student comes to the UZ to do mathematics, what are the possible
jobs at the moment?
Some can join teaching, which is not very popular with
graduands (at the moment). Others can join the insurance industry to become
actuaries, or they can join UZ itself. But, as I said before, in principle they
can do anything. Banking is a good area for mathematicians, and maybe they
could eventually teach the bankers banking as well.
Industry should employ mathematicians as they are very good
at research. Unfortunately, so far, what we call research in our industrial
circles is (more often than not) only small adaptations of the current
technology to Zimbabwe, otherwise known as tinkering, and not usually anything
fundamental or original.
Why are there two departments of mathematics in the UZ?
Well.... the other department is called the Department of
Mathematics and Science Education. It is more concerned with mathematics
education, but the Mathematics Department concentrates on the fundamentals of
mathematics as a subject. So the two have different areas of concentration.
In the talk with Prof Dzinotyiweyi we have met with some
examples of how far (Zimbabwean) mathematicians have been able to progress in
other areas beyond mathematics. So mathematics is not such a drag after all.
There is a bright future in mathematics, even in Zimbabwe.
Mathematics will remain a useful tool for those who have it,
if they use it properly. Sometimes the benefits of mathematics cannot be reaped
immediately or directly. But this is the same with almost every field of
endeavour, only that maths has received especially bad publicity. Maybe it's
time to look at the subject more as an adventure, and less as an instrument of
torture invented by teachers. Ko, dzinotyiweyiko samhu dzacho. (That's a pun in
Shona, Prof Dzino's native language, meaning "What is there to fear in
mathematics?"
Hello, I just saw you posted an article I wrote long ago.
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