Jan Persens, who has died in Cape Town at the age of 71, became a doctor of applied mathematics and professor of maths at the University of the Western Cape after refusing to be a farm labourer like his dad.
He was born on October 20 1946 on the farm Donkershoek, in Moorreesburg in the Western Cape, where his father, Piet, was a labourer and his mother, Maria, a servant in the farmhouse.
When he was six, he went to a farm school in Hopefield run by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church. When he was 10, the family moved to a new farm and he was sent to another farm school, also run by the church.
After he completed Standard 5, the farmer, as was often the practice, demanded that he leave school to work full-time on his farm. Persens refused, saying that he wanted to continue his schooling.
His parents, who recognised his exceptional academic ability, supported him and were kicked off the farm and had to look for other work. Persens was sent to stay with a family in Malmesbury, 30km away, where he attended Schoonspruit Secondary School.
ASSISTED HIS CLASSMATES
Teachers and fellow pupils quickly realised that he was exceptional. Each year he completed the curriculum way ahead of schedule and then helped his classmates.Although he shone at everything, his passion was maths and science. In all his grades he would ask his teachers to set practice exam papers for him, which, together with any other papers he could get his hands on, he would work through on his own.
He got a first-class matric in 1964, and was one of the top 10 coloured matriculants in the country.
He completed a BSc degree in maths and science through Unisa, while teaching at Bellville South Senior Secondary School. He then became the first postgraduate maths student at the University of the Western Cape, where he completed a BSc honours degree in applied maths.
In 1973, he was part of the first generation of black lecturers at UWC, and the first black lecturer in maths and applied maths at the university.
While lecturing he completed his master's degree in applied maths through Unisa in 1977. The title of his MSc thesis was "On the Plateau problem and the theory of minimal surfaces".
In 1980, he and several other senior academics including the future vice-chancellor Professor Jakes Gerwel were arrested at their homes for participating in protests demanding that UWC be opened to all races. In accordance with apartheid law it was a university for coloureds only.
FORD FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP
They were sent to Victor Verster prison in Paarl. Persens was still locked up there when his daughter, Janine, was born in May, and he had to wait for his release, without charge, before he got to see her.
Meanwhile, he'd been awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship, and in 1981 he left for Cornell University in New York with his family.In 1985, he completed his master's in applied maths and in 1986 his PhD in applied maths, making him one of the first black maths PhDs in South Africa. The title of his thesis was "On stabilising ill-posed problems for partial differential equations under perturbations of the geometry of the domain".
While at Cornell he got to know astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was on the staff.
His doctoral supervisor at Cornell, Larry Payne, encouraged him to apply for a teaching job, which he felt he had a good chance of getting, and stay on. And during a recruitment drive on campus he was offered a job by Citibank.
However, he returned to South Africa, which was under a state of emergency, as a senior lecturer in maths at UWC. He became professor of maths and head of the department in 1989.
The apartheid government believed that maths was not really suitable for people other than whites. While UWC was being run by the Afrikaner Broederbond it was not taken very seriously as a discipline.
Persens was passionate about changing this and raising the profile and status of maths at UWC. He encouraged members of the department to further their studies in maths, and used his international contacts to make it possible for them to study at universities overseas, particularly in the US.
REPUTABLE MATHEMATICIANS
He got the university to appoint reputable mathematicians to the staff, such as Loyiso Nongxa, a former Rhodes scholar who obtained his PhD in maths in 1982, and at Persens' prompting was offered a professorship at UWC.
As a member of the maths commission of the national education crisis committee that was formed after the 1976 Soweto student uprising, he strived to improve the teaching of maths in black schools and increase the number and quality of black students taking maths at university.He believed strongly in the need for UWC to form partnerships and run staff and student exchange programmes with universities around the world and in Africa, particularly in the field of maths and science.
DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
He devoted himself to this when he became director of international relations at UWC in 1998. He presented papers in the UK, Europe, US and Africa on topics such as "internationalisation in tertiary education", "making the most of north-south university co-operation", "building partnerships", "supporting international mobility and sustainable exchange agreements".
He played a leading role in negotiations to break down racial barriers between different maths associations in South Africa and unite them into the Association for Mathematics Education of South Africa in 1992.
He was the first black president of the South African Mathematical Society, and president of the African Mathematical Union from 2000 to 2004.
In 2017 he, with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, received a Special Recognition Award for his services to UWC.
Persens, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease seven years ago, is survived by his wife, Judy-Ann, and three children. 
1946-2018..