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. whe ...

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

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, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

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 a wide variety of related subjects, generalizations, and applications, including recurrence relations, combinatorial identities, binomia ...

and as an

Biography

Brother A brother 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 familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familia ...

Brousseau was born in North Beach,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

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

juniorate A juniorate is a secondary school for young people planning to enter religious life. Roman Catholic For Sisters of the Servants of Mary The Servite Order, officially known as the Order of Servants of Mary ( la, Ordo Servorum Beatae Mariae Virgin ...

of the De La Salle Christian Brothers (

Brothers of the Christian Schools french: Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes , image = Signum Fidei.jpg , image_size = 175px , caption = , abbreviation = FSC , nickname = Lasallians , named_after = , formation ...

), 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

Moraga, California Moraga is a town in Contra Costa County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The town is named in honor of Joaquín Moraga, member of the famed Californio family. As of 2020, Moraga had a total population of 16,870 people. Moraga is ...

, 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 ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its 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 which r ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, 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 numbers, commonly denoted , form a sequence, the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. The sequence commonly starts from 0 and 1, although some authors start the sequence from ...

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 continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' 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 recording the native

flora Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''. E ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

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