Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter

Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, CC ( born February 9, 1907 in London, † March 31, 2003 in Toronto ) was a British- Canadian mathematician. His field was geometry, among other things, he worked on regular polytopes.

Life and work

Coxeter attended King Alfred School in Hampstead and St George 's School in Harpenden. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received the degree of Ph. D..

From 1931 to 1936 he was a Research Fellow at Trinity College. During this time he was even two years Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and then JE Procter Fellow at Princeton University. There he attended the lectures of Hermann Weyl on Lie groups and took part, the seminars and controlled attachments to Weyl's elaborate lecture at ( Representations of Continuous Groups 1935). At Cambridge, he was one of the selected students who were allowed to work out Ludwig Wittgenstein 's lectures ( Blue Book ). In 1936, he joined the Canadian University of Toronto. He was from 1936 to 1943 assistant professor of mathematics, then to 1948 Associate Professor and finally from 1948 to 1980 professor.

Coxeter was in English-speaking countries and beyond as a leading authority on classical geometry, which he wrote well-known textbooks. He ran geometric research at a time when the geometry has been generally regarded as situated off the mathematical " mainstream ". Particularly well known were his book and his work on regular polytopes of various kinds, he was also interested in recreational mathematics, got the new edition of the classic WW Rouse Ball Mathematical Recreations and Essays and wrote about the mathematical background of the graphics of MC Escher. Coxeter also dealt with combinatorial group theory and the theory of Lie algebras.

From 1948 to 1957 was editor of the Coxeter Canadian Journal of Mathematics. He was also a visiting professor at universities in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria and the USA.

Coxeter not only maintained a correspondence with Escher, but with all sorts of people who shared his geometric interest, such as with sculptor John Robinson, Magnus Wenninger, Alicia Boole Stott and George Odom, inmate of a mental hospital in New York, go to the discoveries in the field of polytopes.

In 1936 he married Hendrina ( Rina ) Brouwer ( a Dutch woman who was not related to the mathematician Brouwer ), who died in 1999 and with whom he had a son and a daughter.

Honors

After Coxeter including the Todd - Coxeter algorithm and Coxeter groups have been designated. Coxeter was recorded in 1950 as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1997, the Sylvester Medal awarded him. From 1962 to 1963 he was President of the Canadian Mathematical Society, which in 1995 awarded him the Distinguished Service Award. In 1968, he was vice president of the American Mathematical Society. In 1995 he received the CRM / Fields Institute Prize. Also in 1997 he became a Companion of the Order of Canada (CC). Coxeter was also Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He received an honorary doctorate from universities in Canada and Germany. He was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2001.

In his honor, the Coxeter - James Prize of the Canadian Mathematical Society is awarded.

The asteroid ( 18560 ) Coxeter was named after him.

Writings

  • Imperishable geometry, Birkhäuser 1963, 2nd edition 1981 ( English original: Introduction to Geometry, Wiley, 1961, 2nd edition 1969)
  • With SL Greitzer: Timeless geometry, Velcro, 1983 ( English original: Geometry Revisited, Random House, 1967)
  • The Beauty of Geometry: Twelve Essays, Dover 1968, 1999
  • Kaleidoscopes - Selected writings of HMSCoxeter, Wiley 1995 ( Published by F. Arthur Sherk )
  • Non- Euclidean Geometry, University of Toronto Press 1942, 1965, Reprint Mathematical Association of America ( MAA) 1998
  • Projective Geometry, Blaisdell 1964, 2nd edition, University of Toronto Press 1974, Springer 1987
  • The Fifty -Nine icosahedra ( with Patrick Du Val, HT Flather, John Flinders Petrie ), Toronto 1938, Springer 1982
  • Mathematical Recreations and Essays, University of Toronto Press, 1974 ( new edition of the book by WW Rouse Ball)
  • With WOJ Moser: Generators and relations for discrete groups, Springer, 1957, 4th edition 1980
  • Publisher: MC Escher - Proc.Int.Congress on MCEscher, Rome, 1985, North Holland 1986
W. W. Rouse Ball Todd–Coxeter algorithm Presentation of a group Coxeter–James Prize (18560) Coxeter Euler Book Prize Integrated Authority File
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