Mathematics is my life - Prof. Osborne Jackson
Do you love Mathematics or you are one of those students who always wished the Maths teacher would not be in school so that you would be free from studying the subject?
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If you are, then I bet you can learn a lot from the story of our personality for this week, Prof Osborne A.Y. Jackson, for he made Mathematics a large part of his life and that served him greatly. He looked at everything around him in terms of their relation to Mathematics.
Can you imagine how much fun he had as a little boy playing around, even with vehicle registration numbers, by looking out for both odd and even numbers among them?
His reason for playing with all those numbers was simple — to make Arithmetic easier for him. Each of those activities was, therefore, an opportunity for him to solve a mathematical problem.
And did that serve him any good?
It sure did, because it made him so well-versed in Arithmetic that at a point he used to organise tutorials for his classmates who had a challenge in the subject in elementary school.
Today, not only is that little boy a professor of Mathematics and Statistics but he also served as a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana during the regime of former President Jerry John Rawlings.
Prof Osborne A.Y. Jackson is also a former Deputy Director of the United Nations Statistical Division.
His knowledge in figures is so deep that even though he has long retired from active service, the nation continues to draw from his immense knowledge of the subject.
He is currently a lecturer and Head of the Mathematics Department at the Methodist University College.
During an interview with Prof Jackson, he told this reporter that his love for mathematics could perhaps also be due to the kind of family he was born into.
According to him, with the exception of his younger brother who pursued a degree in Electrical Engineering, all his siblings (5) had honours degrees in Mathematics. Two of his elder brothers were indeed, the first Ghanaians to earn first class degrees in Mathematics.
His late father had a great interest in figures, having worked in the Accounts Department of the UAC (now Unilever) as a bookkeeper.
“Mathematics is strongly associated with the Jacksons of Winneba and admirers jokingly refer to Mathematics as the Jackson Family disease,” he said in his book ‘A life of Figures’.
Born in Saltpond in the Central Region, Young Osborne was so enthusiastic about the idea of going to school even before he was enrolled. That was because his elder brothers had told him a lot of interesting things about school.
When he finally started school in Winneba, where he spent most of his childhood years, he realised, however, that though school was interesting, it came with its own challenges.
Challenges
Young Osborne encountered challenges when he started school because his father died when he was only 11.
That unfortunate event threw his family into financial difficulties.
For that reason, if there were any payments that needed to be made regarding the education of the kids in the family,
priority was given to his elder siblings because they were ahead of him.
The financial challenges the family encountered also made him live with one of his uncles who owned a UAC shop.
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“At my uncle’s house, every morning before I left for school I had to go to the shop and help serve customers for some time.
In the afternoon during lunch break, I had to go back home for my uncle’s food.
After he had eaten, I ate the leftover and washed the bowls before returning to school.
At weekends, I assisted in the shop by helping customers who had bought items from the shop to send their goods to their homes,” he recalled.
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“I had to avoid being seen by my schoolmates while carrying those items in order not to be teased at school.
Sometimes I felt bad doing those things because I knew if my father were alive, I wouldn’t be running those errands,” he lamented.
School time
Those difficulties notwithstanding, Young Osborne had time for his books. Every evening, after returning from the shop, he made sure he spent some time studying.
Because of that, he was often among the top students in his class, an achievement that made him the toast of his teachers.
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His elder brothers were his seniors at Achimota School and, therefore, while studying there, he used their textbooks, shirts and exercise books.
That earned him the nickname, ‘Olewu’, meaning ‘miser’, and till date his mates from Achimota School call him by that name.
He said in those days at Achimota School, some of his mates, including Gilchrist Olympio, the son of the former Togolese President, were driven to school in cars.
When he was a boy, he said, he occasionally wished he had the kind of things those rich students had.
Pastime
Will you believe that even though the Prof of Mathematics grew up in Winneba, a community noted for its beautiful beaches, he cannot swim?
The reason he gave for this was that as a young boy, his uncle had warned him not to go to the beach. Afraid of the consequences of disobeying his uncle’s orders, he rarely went there to play, as was the case with other children.
He also did not play a lot as his friends did because his busy work schedule at his uncle’s shop did not allow him to do so.
While in secondary school, however, he got the opportunity to engage in a number of sports, such as cricket, football and volleyball, because they were compulsory in Achimota School.
Professional / Academic Career
• Taught for a long time at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
• Had his Masters degree in Statistics.
• Has a PhD degree, with specialisation in Statistics.
• Joined the Bank of Ghana in 1972 as a Statistician.
• In 1980, he was seconded from the BoG to the Central Bureau of Statistics as Government Statistician.
He is married to Mrs Millicent Jackson and they have three children.