Draft:Anthony Charles Croft
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Professor Anthony Charles Croft (Tony), CMath and FIMA, is a British mathematician known for his work in mathematics education including university-wide mathematics and statistics support, engineering mathematics, mathematical education of specialist mathematicians and also non-specialist users of mathematics. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University.
Early life and education
[edit]Croft attended St Thomas Aquinas Grammar School in Leeds. He went on to gain a BSc (First Class Honours) and an M.Phil in Mathematics from the University of Leeds and then a PhD in Numerical Analysis from Keele University.
Career
[edit]Croft’s career in mathematics education began by teaching mathematics at Peel Sixth form College in Bury before he moved to Crewe & Alsager College in Cheshire (now part of Manchester Metropolitan University) where he taught mathematics to students studying for Bachelor of Education and Postgraduate Certificate in Education qualifications. In 1988 he took up a lecturing post at Leicester Polytechnic, later De Montfort University. It was in Leicester that he began authoring with his longtime collaborator Robert Davison. In 1996 a further move took him to Loughborough University, initially to establish a support centre to offer supplementary mathematics help to its many thousands of engineering students.
In 2002 he was appointed founding director of the Mathematics Education Department[1] at Loughborough University, which today has evolved into one of the UK's leading centres for research into and practice of the learning and teaching of mathematics and statistics.
From 2005-2010 with Professor Duncan Lawson from Coventry University he established the sigma Centre for Excellence in University-wide Mathematics and Statistics Support.[2] which was awarded the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Support for Students.[3] Croft and Lawson, in collaboration with Professor Michael Grove from the University of Birmingham have highlighted the need for, and contributed extensively to the academic literature on, the practice of additional mathematics support provision in higher education. This work includes several surveys on the extent of provision and a literature review.[4] Croft, with Lawson and Grove, were lead members of the team that established mathcentre[5] a virtual maths support centre offering resources and advice to students in higher education. To-date hundreds of thousands of students around the world have found this an invaluable resource.
Croft is a well-established academic author particularly in the fields of Engineering Mathematics and Foundation Mathematics. The fifth edition of his book Mathematics for Engineers was published in 2019 by Pearson Education with an e-book 6th edition due in 2025.
He was awarded a UK National Teaching Fellowship in 2008 in recognition of his pioneering work in mathematics support for students transitioning from school to university. In 2016 he was awarded the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications' Gold Medal[6] jointly with Lawson for "an outstanding contribution to the improvement of the teaching of mathematics" by establishing sigma. Since 2024 he has served on the Council of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
References
[edit]- ^ "Mathematics Education Department". Loughborough University MEC. Retrieved 2025-03-20.
- ^ "About". Sigma Network. 28 August 2012. Retrieved 2025-03-20.
- ^ "Archive 2011". The Awards. Retrieved 2025-03-20.
- ^ Lawson, Duncan; Grove, Michael; Croft, Tony (2020). "The evolution of mathematics support: a literature review". International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. 51 (8): 1224–1254. Bibcode:2020IJMES..51.1224L. doi:10.1080/0020739X.2019.1662120.
- ^ "mathcentre". mathcentre.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
- ^ "Citation for Two IMA Gold Medals". ima.org.uk. 14 September 2016. Retrieved 2025-03-20.