Brother Alfred Brousseau, F.S.C. (February 17, 1907 – May 31, 1988), was an

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and was known mostly as a founder of

the Fibonacci Association The Fibonacci Association is a mathematical organization that specializes in the Fibonacci number sequence and related topics in mathematics. History The organization was founded in 1963 by Brother Alfred Brousseau FSC of Saint Mary's College of ...

and as an

Biography

Brother A brother (: brothers or brethren) is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a family, familial relationship, it is sometimes used ende ...

Alfred Brousseau was born in North Beach,

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, as one of six children. On August 14, 1920, Brousseau entered the

juniorate Juniorate is a three-year course of philosophy in high school for candidates that are planning to postulate to become a priest or nun. During this time, they will get deeper involved and will decide whether this is the road they are interested in ...

of the De La Salle Christian Brothers (

Brothers of the Christian Schools The De La Salle Brothers, officially named the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (; ; ) abbreviated FSC, is a Catholic lay religious congregation of pontifical right for men founded in France by Jean-Baptiste de La Salle (16 ...

), a religious institute of teachers in the Roman Catholic Church. He was accepted into the Christian Brothers

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

on 31 July 1923 and advanced to the scholasticate on the campus of St. Mary's College in 1924.

Academic career

In 1926, while still a college student, Brousseau began teaching at Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, California. He continued teaching at the secondary level until 1930 when he was assigned to teach at St. Mary's College while subsequently pursuing a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, in 1937. In 1941 Brousseau was appointed principal of Sacred Heart High School in San Francisco, and later was appointed provincial of the Christian Brothers of the District of California. He returned to St. Mary's College in 1959 and became chair of the School of Science. Between this period and 1978, Alfred served both president and treasurer of the Northern Section of the California Mathematics Council and later as president of the entire State Council. In 1963, with the American

Verner E. Hoggatt, Brousseau founded

with the intention of promoting research into the

Fibonacci numbers In mathematics, the Fibonacci sequence is a sequence in which each element is the sum of the two elements that precede it. Numbers that are part of the Fibonacci sequence are known as Fibonacci numbers, commonly denoted . Many writers begin the s ...

and related fields. In 1969 Brousseau commented on the Fibonacci Association (and its associated journal, the ''

Fibonacci Quarterly The ''Fibonacci Quarterly'' is a scientific journal on mathematical topics related to the Fibonacci numbers, published four times per year. It is the primary publication of The Fibonacci Association, which has published it since 1963. Its founding ...

'') in the April edition of ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' magazine, "We got a group of people together in 1963, and just like a bunch of nuts, we started a mathematics magazine ... eopletend to find an esthetic satisfaction in it. They think that there's some kind of mystical connection between these numbers and the universe."

Photography

Brousseau was a keen

and amassed a collection of in excess of 20,000 color 35 mm

transparencies A transparency, also known variously as a viewfoil or foil (from the French word "feuille" or sheet), or viewgraph, is a thin sheet of transparent flexible material, typically polyester (historically cellulose acetate), onto which figures can be ...

recording the native

flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

References

External links

Brother Alfred BrousseauSelected photographs by BrousseauCalifornia Mathematics Council
1907 births 1988 deaths People from San Francisco De La Salle Brothers Roman Catholic religious brothers Saint Mary's College of California alumni UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Educators from California Fibonacci numbers Photographers from California 20th-century American mathematicians Scientists from California {{US-mathematician-stub