Thorold Gosset

Thorold Gosset (* 1869, † 1962) was a British amateur mathematician and lawyer who dealt with polytopes. His main job was a lawyer.

Gosset studied mostly classical languages ​​and was in 1888 at Pembroke College, Cambridge University and then law. In 1895 he was admitted as a lawyer ( called to the bar ) and received a law degree in 1896. As he had no clients ( HSM Coxeter so ) he dealt with regular polyhedra in arbitrary dimensions (where his discoveries were already made ​​by others) and then with semi- regular polyhedra. He classified semiregular polyhedra in four or more dimensions, and wrote an essay, which he forwarded it to the editor of the Messenger of Mathematics James W. Glaisher. This showed him Alfred North Whitehead and William Burnside, but was published only a summary of 1897. Burnside was to have read to only half and did not realize the full significance of Gosset 's essay ( Coxeter ).

His results were rediscovered by Emanuel Lodewijk Elte (1912 ) in the Netherlands and by Coxeter. Coxeter named three semiregular polytopes in 6 () 7 ( ) and 8 dimensions ( ) to Gosset ( their corners associated with the roots of the exceptional Lie groups E6, E7, E8 together). Also, the Gosset graph ( with the associated ) is named after him.

Gosset continued to pursue his law career and wrote, among other things, a book on real estate law.

Writings

• With W. Howland Jackson: Investigation of title: being a practical treatise and alphabetical digest of the law connected with the title to land, with precedents of requisitions, London: Stevens 1898, 5th edition 1946