Aurelio Baldor

Who was Aurelio Baldor?

Aurelio Baldor was a Cuban mathematician, educator and lawyer. Baldor is the author of a secondary school algebra textbook, titled Algebra, used throughout the Spanish-speaking world and published for the first time in 1941.

He was the youngest child of Daniel and Gertrudis Baldor, and the meaning of his last name is "valley of gold". He was the founder and director of the prestigious Baldor School in the exclusive Vedado section of Havana. In its heyday, the school had 3,500 students and used 23 buses to provide transportation to its students. In 1959, with the arrival of Fidel Castro's communist regime, Aurelio Baldor and his family began experiencing some problems. Raúl Castro had intended to arrest Baldor, but Camilo Cienfuegos—one of Fidel Castro's own top commanders—prevented the arrest, as he highly admired and respected Baldor for his accomplishments as an educator.

After the sudden and mysterious death of Camilo Cienfuegos approximately one month later in an airplane which disappeared over the sea, Baldor and his family left Cuba and were exiled in Mexico for a short time, and then they migrated to New Orleans, Louisiana. Afterward, they moved on to New York and New Jersey, where Baldor continued teaching at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City. He also taught daily classes in mathematics at the now defunct Stevens Academy, in Hoboken, New Jersey.