Judy was born in 1948 on a farm in Zambia, going to boarding school and then moving with her family to South Africa. She completed her undergraduate degree and a Masters in Mathematics Education at Cape Town University, before taking a position at Leaf College, a school for historically disadvantaged students in post-apartheid South Africa. She married Freddie Paterson and had three children, Katy, Marion and Jonny. Their lives were tragically disrupted when Freddie died in a cycling accident in 1990.

Encouraged by friends who had come to New Zealand, including Bill Williams (then the University of Auckland Director of Public Relations Office), Judy brought her children here to begin a new life in 1995. She quickly obtained a position at the new Senior College in downtown Auckland under Dawn Jones and John Graham. She and the children settled in Browns Bay.

The government demand for competition in teacher education led the Department of Mathematics at the University of Auckland to launch a pre-service secondary mathematics teacher programme. Judy was appointed to design and teach the programme in 1995. She subsequently ran an innovative programme, initiating a double-major mathematics/mathematics design (all other programmes required two separate major subjects). She made this so successful in turning out leading mathematics teachers that this design is now found nationwide.

Building on this success, Judy applied for funding for a development programme that took top secondary teachers in other subjects and, in a one-year programme, transformed them into mathematics teachers. Such was the success of this programme that participants remain teaching decades later.

Judy enrolled in a PhD in mathematics education in 2004, exploring her hypothesis that teachers could be led to reconsider their pedagogy by inspiring them with new mathematics content learning. Not only did she prove the hypothesis, but she developed a theoretical model and provided evidence for the causal connections, using her data to identify necessary conditions for teachers to move from their own mathematical learning to thinking about their students as learners.

Judy remains well-known by secondary mathematics teachers throughout the Auckland region due to the programmes she initiated to keep teachers in touch with the Department of Mathematics through public seminars and talks, workshops and research projects, and maintaining personal contacts. She will be remembered by them as the face of university mathematics for a long time to come.

From 2008-2010, Judy also worked under contract to the National Centre of Literacy and Numeracy for Adults, University of Waikato, on professional development in numeracy education for educators in the tertiary foundation sector. Judy brought mathematical rigour, extensive experience in teaching and learning professional development, challenge, bluntness, fun, and her infectious laugh to this team and its work.

In 2015, Judy passed away from ovarian cancer. She is greatly missed by her children, extended family, colleagues and friends. She was a woman who stood out - her ability to connect meaningfully with almost anyone, her optimism, her kindness, her glorious laugh. She had a deep curiosity about everything in life, but in particular about how people learn, and how people teach. This made her an exceptional educator and mentor to so many. She would be very proud to be associated with this award.

-          Katy Watts and Bill Barton

Find out more about the New Zealand Literacy and Numeracy Educator awards