Teachers of the mathematically gifted: Two case studies

This article is devoted to people who taught highly gifted schoolchildren and developed educational materials for them. Teaching the highly gifted involves changing the contents of education and, possibly more importantly, changing its form and style. Consequently, mathematics educators who are involved in such teaching face new problems, and in fact such teaching often means the appearance of a special new type of teacher at a school. In this paper, we will discuss two prominent Russian figures in the advanced course of study in mathematics. An analysis of their biographies will facilitate a better understanding of both the methodological and the pedagogical history of the advanced course of study in mathematics, as well as the social-political circumstances under which such study took place in the Soviet Union.