Paulus Pierre Joseph Gerdes (November 11, 1952 – November 10, 2014) was a Dutch mathematician and university professor, who was one of the pioneers in the field of ethnomathematics research, particularly in Africa.
[1][2] Gerdes was a student of mathematics and physics as an undergraduate at Radboud University Nijmegen.
[1] He came to Mozambique in 1976, started working at Eduardo Mondlane University in 1977, and remained in the country for the rest of his life, with positions in the Ministry of Education and Culture and as dean and later rector at the Instituto Superior Pedagógico (now Maputo University).
through the Pädagogische Hochschule „Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander“ Dresden [de] in Germany, with the dissertation Zum erwachenden geometrischen Denken: Tätigkeit und die mögliche Herkunft einiger früher geometrischer Begriffe und Relationen, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mathematik der Entwicklungsländer [On the awakening of geometric thinking: activity and the possible origin of some early geometric concepts and relations, with special reference to the mathematics of the developing countries] supervised by Heiner Meyer.
[6] A special issue of the Journal of Mathematics and Culture was published in his memory in 2021.