Alicia Boole Stott
Alicia Boole Stott (8 June 1860 – 17 December 1940) was a British mathematician. She made a number of contributions to the field and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen. She grasped four-dimensional geometry from an early age, and introduced the term "polytope" for a convex solid in four or more dimensions.
Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Personal life 2 Career Toggle Career subsection 2.1 Early 2.2 Late 3 Death and legacy 4 Citations 5 References 6 External links Toggle External links subsection 6.1 Publications Toggle the table of contents Alicia Boole Stott 22 languages العربية مصرى Български Català Cymraeg Deutsch Ελληνικά Español Euskara فارسی Français Galego Հայերեն Italiano 日本語 한국어 മലയാളം Nederlands Polski Português Türkçe 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 20014b005f92:a70b ( talk ) at 15:44, 16 April 2024 (Undid revision 1202149138 by 2600:6C5C:6C00:1A3E:6085:927F:F400:C496 ( talk )) . The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision . Revision as of 15:44, 16 April 2024 by 20014b005f92:a70b ( talk ) (Undid revision 1202149138 by 2600:6C5C:6C00:1A3E:6085:927F:F400:C496 ( talk )) ( diff ) ← Previous revision | Latest revision ( diff ) | Newer revision → ( diff ) Irish mathematician (1860–1940) Alicia Boole Stott Born 8 June 1860 Cork , Ireland Died 17 December 1940 (1940-12-17) (aged 80) Middlesex , England Citizenship British Known for Mathematics Parents George Boole (father) Mary Everest Boole (mother) Alicia Boole Stott (8 June 1860 – 17 December 1940) 1 was a British mathematician . She made a number of contributions to the field and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen . 2 She grasped four-dimensional geometry from an early age, and introduced the term " polytope " for a convex solid in four or more dimensions. 3 Personal life Alicia Boole was born in Cork , Ireland, the third of five daughters of English parents: mathematician and logician George Boole and Mary Everest Boole , a self-taught mathematician and educationalist. Of her sisters, Lucy Everest Boole was a chemist and pharmacist and Ethel Lilian Voynich was a novelist. After her father's sudden death in 1864, the family moved to London, where her mother became the librarian at Queen's College, London . 4 Alicia attended the school attached to Queens' College with one of her sisters, but never attended university. She was known to her friends and family as Alice, though she always published under the name Alicia. Career Early Alicia was the only Boole sister to inherit the mathematical career of her parents, although her mother Mary Everest Boole had brought up all of her five children from an early age "to acquaint them with the flow of geometry" by projecting shapes onto paper, hanging pendulums etc. 5 She was first exposed to geometric models by her brother-in-law Charles Howard Hinton when she was 17, and developed the ability to visualise four-dimensional space . 2 4 She found that there are exactly six regular convex 4-polytopes . That discovery had been made by Ludwig Schläfli before 1850 but his work had not yet been published. She introduced the term polytope because she did not know Schläfli's term polyscheme . 6 She produced three-dimensional central cross-sections of all the six regular polytopes by purely Euclidean constructions and synthetic methods since she had never learned any analytic geometry . She made cardboard models of all these sections. Late After taking up secretarial work near Liverpool in 1889 she met and married Walter Stott, an actuary, in 1890. They had two children together, Mary (1891–1982) and Leonard (1892–1963). 7 Stott learned of Pieter Schoute 's work on central sections of the regular polytopes in 1895. Schoute came to England and worked with Alicia Stott, persuading her to publish her results which she did in two papers published in Amsterdam in 1900 and 1910. 8 The University of Groningen honoured her by inviting her to attend the tercentenary celebrations of the university and awarding her an honorary doctorate in 1914. 9 After Schoute's death in 1913 Alicia took a hiatus from mathematical work. In 1930 she was introduced by her nephew Geoffrey Ingram Taylor to Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter and they worked together on various problems. 9 Alicia made two further important discoveries relating to constructions for polyhedra related to the golden section. She presented a joint paper with Coxeter at the University of Cambridge . 4 Coxeter later wrote, "The strength and simplicity of her character combined with the diversity of her interests to make her an inspiring friend." 3 Death and legacy Alicia died in Middlesex in 1940. 9 In spring 2001, a paper roll of coloured drawings of polyhedra was found at Groningen University. 4 Though unsigned, it was immediately recognised as Alicia's work. It led to research by Irene Polo-Blanco, who dedicated a chapter to Alicia's work in her book Theory and History of Geometric Models (2007). The pioneering spirit of grandfather and mother continued in her son Leonard, who assisted in tuberculosis treatment and invented an artificial pneumothorax apparatus. 10 Citations ^ Riddle, Larry, "Alicia Boole Stott" , Biographies of Women Mathematicians , Agnes Scott College ^ a b Morrow, Charlene; Perl, Teri (1998). Notable Women in Mathematics: A Biographical Dictionary . Greenwood Press . pp. 243– 245. ^ a b Coxeter 1973 , pp. 258–259. ^ a b c d Des MacHale ; Anne Mac Lellan (2009). Mulvihill, Mary (ed.). Lab Coats and Lace . Women in Technology and Science. ISBN 9780953195312 . ^ Gerry Kennedy (2016) The Booles and the Hintons , Atrium Press, page 85. ISBN 978-1782051855 ^ Coxeter 1973 , p. vi, Preface to the first edition. ^ Polo-Blanco, Irene (May 2008). "Alicia Boole Stott, a geometer in higher dimension". Historia Mathematica . 35 (2): 123– 139. doi : 10.1016/j.hm.2007.10.008 . ^ W. W. Rouse Ball (1960) Mrs. Stott's Construction , in Mathematical Recreations and Essays, Macmillan, New York, pp 139–140. ^ a b c Franceschetti, Donald R. (1999). "Biographical Encyclopedia of Mathematicians – Vol. 2" . Marshall Cavendish . pp. 482– 484. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. ^ Chas, Moira (December 2019). "The extraordinary case of the Stott family" (PDF) . Notices of the American Mathematical Society . 66 (11): 1853– 1866. doi : 10.1090/noti1996 . References Coxeter, H.S.M. (1973) 1948. Regular Polytopes (3rd ed.). New York: Dover. External links O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F. , "Alicia Boole Stott" , MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive , University of St Andrews "Alicia Boole Stott, the woman who could see four dimensions - Moira Chas" . YouTube . Stony Brook Mathematics. 4 October 2020. Publications A. Boole Stott: Geometrical deduction of semiregular from regular polytopes and space fillings , Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen Natuurkunde, Eerste Sectie, deel 11, nummer 1 (1910), 1–24. Amsterdam, 1910. All publications by A. Boole Stott (as an author and as a co-author) with the Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen Authority control databases International ISNI VIAF GND WorldCat National United States Netherlands Academics Mathematics Genealogy Project zbMATH MathSciNet People Ireland Other IdRef Yale LUX Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alicia_Boole_Stott&oldid=1219243962 " Categories : 1860 births 1940 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians 20th-century English mathematicians British women mathematicians Scientists from Cork (city) People from London Geometers University of Groningen alumni 20th-century women mathematicians Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata Use British English from December 2017 All Wikipedia articles written in British English Use dmy dates from December 2023 Articles with hCards This page was last edited on 16 April 2024, at 15:44 (UTC) . This version of the page has been revised . Besides normal editing, the reason for revision may have been that this version contains factual inaccuracies, vandalism, outdated information, or material not compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License . Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Legal & safety contacts Code of Conduct Developers Statistics Cookie statement Mobile view Search Search Toggle the table of contents Alicia Boole Stott 22 languages Add topic