It is with sad news we inform the QAMT community that long standing executive member, past AAMT councillor and BBC teacher/Maths HOD Chicri Maksoud passed away 3rd February.
All of the QAMT executive and AAMT council are grateful for the wonderful memories we shared with Chicri and pass our deepest sympathies to his family and friends, as well as colleagues and students at BBC. Chicri was a true gentleman and will be missed.
“This is very sad indeed and I am glad that I don’t have a class to teach until later in the day. I am trying to comprehend the magnitude of this, and also trying to remember when I first met Chicri. It was definitely at a QAMT conference.
QAMT in Townsville (2014) was when I first spoke to him (I think) since we were both staying at the University. I had seen Chicri at many other QAMT conferences prior to Townsville, but never really spoken to him. One of first things to strike me about Chicri was how humble he was. He always made you the centre of attention in any conversation. Chicri was also an excellent presenter and facilitator. I attended his session at the QAMT conference in 2016 at Brisbane Boys’ College where he was looking at probabilities for dart throwing tournaments. It was very interesting and compelling. He also had another use for his mathematics as he looked at various social justice issues, using mathematics to analyse these situations.
Chicri was also an excellent mathematical modeller and facilitator for BBC. His team won the International Modelling Challenge in 2019 (Australia) and were invited to go to Singapore for the final. Chicri’s teams have since been awarded honourable mentions and meritorious awards in the years since 2019.
Over the Christmas holidays, Bob Nelder was proofing work that Chicri was doing for a Cambridge project. The work involved writing success criteria with several examples and worked solutions. Bob commented that Chicri was really making him ‘sing for his supper’ as he would send in 30 pages of problems and worked solutions for one success criteria. The other authors were sending in about 6-10 pages on average for each success criteria. Bob liked Chicri’s work as it was very easy to proof compared to the other authors. It was also very accurate with minimal mistakes.
I feel honoured and privileged to have had the opportunity to know and work with Chicri over the last few years on the QAMT executive. I have many fond memories of Chicri which I will cherish with pride and joy.”
QAMT Immediate Past President Stephen Broderick
