Thread by @edsouthall

Rest in peace Don Steward, you were and will continue to be a huge inspiration and positive influence on mathematics teachers.

If you are unfamiliar with Don, I am jealous that you will get lost for the first time in a joyous discovery of the endless wonders within his website.
donsteward.blogspot.com

I first discovered his resources back in the early 2010's and they changed they way i thought about resources very quickly. I contacted him in 2014 to see if he would come and talk to my trainees in my new job as a mathematics teacher trainer

He was extremely courteous in his baffled reply suggesting that no-one would want to see him, and no-one knew who he was. He had no idea that the maths community, at least on twitter, was in love with him.

He came to my University despite his reservations and enjoyed it thoroughly - as did his captivated audience of teachers and trainees. He was an utter joy to watch and learn from, and his enthusiasm for mathematics was enviable.

I'll never forget how he would spontaneously go with his thoughts and set us a task. "This is how far I've got with it, but I haven't got my head around it, shall we all try?" he asked as he shared his own thoughts on a geometry wormhole he had dug himself.

I discovered shortly after that (to my embarrassment) day just how deep rooted his influence has been on mathematics education for many years prior to me finding his website (I suspect @mathsjem showed the site to me initially)

I asked him to return the following year and he again obliged, and again teachers came from far and wide to see him (one from another country in fact!). I remained in occasional contact and would ask him every time I saw him whether he would consider writing a text book series

He said he'd like to but was again so humble, declaring that no-one would want it. I'm not sure he ever started it, but his website is better than anything you could hope for anyway.

What a clever and wonderfully kind man. He would pop out of nowhere occasionally, like when he sent me a drawing book after seeing a tweet (I'm still convinced he had a secret twitter account!)

https://twitter.com/edsouthall/status/1095400902146605061

There's no space here to do justice to the amazing mathematics he would do and create, but I'm sure much will continue to be shared across the maths community. As a tiny insight into his creativity and brilliance, I'll share just two things

The first was how he casually displayed a slide within his presentation for a mere second with my trainees declaring 'but i always preferred to bisect an angle like this'

I have no idea if it was part of a sly plan, but everyone was gobsmacked and couldn't focus on the next few slides. It was like an amazing revelation : These things can be done in OTHER ways?! It seemed to make everyone click into mathematician mode.

And finally a classic example of the sort of thing he would do. Start with a 'what do you notice', & build your curiosity until you were feverishly reaching for pencil & paper to find out what the hell was going on.

His slides from that session are here:
drive.google.com/open?id=1hi9bq…