Many students They learned algebra with the book “Baldor’s Algebra”. Although this subject was a headache for many, the book has had cultural influence.
The author of this important book was Aurelius Angel Baldora professor dedicated to teaching who had to go into exile in the United States after the Cuban Revolution.
Aurelio, born in Cuba, is one of the men who leaves an important legacy in the midst of a sad story. The study material was published in 1941.
This famous book It has 39 chapters and almost 6 thousand exercises, with step-by-step instructions to solve them.
According to a story in the newspaper El Tiempo, the creator of the “Algebra Baldor” suffered political persecution from Fidel Castro which meant his exile from the island in 1960.
Until the end of his life, This teacher was also unable to capitalize on the profits from his work.
Baldor was born in Havana on October 22, 1906. His name is remembered in the Caribbean country and in Latin America for founding the Baldor Academy Schoolan institution that operated in two large houses rented from a wealthy family.
“He was slim and handsome. His six-foot-six height amplified the appearance of his tanned skin and his intense gaze, retouched with a gentle air; his eyebrows arched beneath a broad forehead and Caribbean-wave hair combed impeccably back,” is how journalist Sandro Mairata described him in his chronicle, published in ‘SoHo’, about the author.
The teacher was quite strict with his students. Hortensia Alzugaray, who was a former student at the school, said he was a great speaker. “Nice, nice. He could talk for an hour and a half and nobody got bored, because his speeches touched your soul,” replied El Nacional of Venezuela.
His passions included baseball and boxing. He is also described as a coffee drinker and a chain smoker, a habit that caused emphysema that cost him his life.
An unknown trait that his son rescues Aurelio Junior In a report by the Soho Magazinewas that his father had a simple life. “It’s not easy to understand, but my father’s life really was reduced to being at home, going to work, practicing theorems and devoting himself to his family,” he told the Colombian magazine.
Exile
Newspaper reports indicate that one day former Cuban President and leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro went to the educational institution (Colegio Academia Baldor) directed by Baldor.
- This action caused Aurelio to leave Cuba, because freedom of education was compromised, since thousands of schools were intervened.
“In Cuba, of course, education was stripped of privacy. The State had already begun to set the syllabus, the books and everything. And I think that he (Baldor) could not accept that, like many others. Artists and scientists emerged at that time, and the natural thing was to go to the United States,” said the doctor in mathematics Javier Elizondo in the aforementioned article.
After Fidel Castro tried to recruit him into the group of intellectuals of the revolution, Baldor sold the rights to his books Arithmetic and Algebra to the Mexican publishing house Publicaciones Culturales, in order to have money to go into exile with his wife and seven children.
Upon his arrival in the United States, the professor lived in Brooklyn and taught at St. Peter’s College in New Jersey, although his life was never the same. He missed his country and the school where he helped educate thousands of Cubans.
It is said that he died hoping to return to Cuba. Finally Aurelius Baldor He died on April 3, 1978, in exile in Miami.
- Relatives later confirmed that neither his father nor his close group received payments for later editions.
The original design of the “Algebra of Baldor” had an image of Al-Juarismigeographer, astronomer and one of the most important mathematicians in history. And for years many assumed that this image was “Baldor.”
- This book created a “cuco” or “bad reputation”, as they say in the Dominican Republic, among the studentsdue to the quantity and difficult exercises it contained.
Likewise, it remains a book vital for education.
