Júlio César de Mello e Souza (Rio de Janeiro, May 6, 1895 – Recife, June 18, 1974), was a Brazilian writer and mathematics teacher. He was well known in Brazil and abroad for his books on recreational mathematics, most of them published under the pen name of Malba Tahan, a fictitious Persian scholar.
He wrote 69 novels and 51 books of mathematics and other subjects. Júlio César's most popular books, including The Man Who Counted, are collections of mathematical problems, puzzles, curiosities, and embedded in tales inspired by the Arabian Nights. He thoroughly researched his subject matters — not only the mathematics, but also the history, geography, and culture of the Islamic Empire which was the backdrop and connecting thread of his books. Yet Júlio César's travels outside Brazil were limited to short visits to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Lisbon: he never set foot in the deserts and cities he described in his books.
Júlio César was very critical of the educational methods used in Brazilian classrooms, especially for mathematics. "The mathematics teacher is a sadist," he claimed, "who loves to make everything as complicated as possible." In education, he was decades ahead of his time, and his proposals are still more praised than implemented today.
For his books, Júlio César received a prize by the prestigious Brazilian Literary Academy and was made a member of the Pernambuco Literary Academy. The Malba Tahan Institute was founded in 2004 at Queluz to preserve his legacy. In 2013, the State Legislature of Rio de Janeiro determined his birthday, May 6, to be commemorated as the Mathematician's Day.
Early life
Júlio César was born in Rio de Janeiro but spent most of his childhood in Queluz, a small rural town in the State of São Paulo. His father, João de Deus de Mello e Souza, was a civil servant with limited salary and eight (some reports say nine) children to support.
In 1905 he was sent with his older brother, João Batista, to Rio de Janeiro to attend preparatory classes for admission to the prestigious Colégio Militar do Rio de Janeiro, where he studied from 1906 to 1909, and later at Colégio Pedro II.
As a student, Júlio César was not academically successful. In a 1905 letter to their parents, João Batista tells that little Júlio "is bad at writing, and a failure in mathematics". His grade reports at Colégio Pedro II show that he once failed an Algebra exam, and barely passed one on Arithmetic. He later attributed these results to the teaching practices of the time, based on "the detestable method of salivation".
As a child in Queluz, he play with frogs. As an adult, he kept up with this hobby by assembling a large collection of frog statuettes.
In 1918, at the age of 23, Júlio César presented five of his tales to the editor of the newspaper O Imparcial, where he worked, but his boss did not even look at them. Undaunted, Júlio picked up the manuscripts and brought them back a few days later, this time pretending that they were translations of the work of a certain "R. S. Slady," supposedly the rage in New York City. The first of those tales, The Jew's Revenge, was published in the front page of the next issue of the newspaper; and the rest followed suit.
Malba Tahan
Malba Tahan, full name Ali Yezzid Izz-Edin ibn-Salim Hanak Malba Tahan, was a fictitious Persian scholar invented by Júlio César, who used him as a pen name. Malba Tahan is claimed to mean “the miller from the oasis” in Arabic, but Tahan was in fact the surname of one of Julio Souza's students, Maria Zechsuk Tahan.