Coxeter number

Coxeter group
Tutte-coxeter graph
Gheehyun nahm cambridge

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American Scientist

Coxeter's lack of name recognition is only the first challenge Roberts faces. Another is that . . . well, let's 'fess up right away, we academics tend not to lead the most exciting lives, by romance-novel standards anyway, and in this Coxeter was no exception. Born in London in 1907, Donald would have led an unblemished childhood but for the trauma of his parents' divorce. The boy showed an early gift for mathematics and music, becoming an accomplished pianist by the age of 10 and also, for a time, a hopeful composer. He was "incarcerated in a boarding school," he reported later in life, and there he fell in love with classical geometry. A few years afterward he received a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he led an existence a Trappist would appreciate, studying relentlessly and graduating in 1928 as Senior Wrangler (which is to say, high scorer) in the legendarily difficult Tripos examination. He stayed on, completing his Ph.D. in 1931, at which point he became a fellow at Trinity and was allowed to cut across the courtyard grass.

Afterward,

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Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter Pure and Applied Mathematics

The Story

The aroma of antiseptic and crisp sheets mingles with the sooty smell of a small coal-burning fireplace at the end of the infirmary room. Two thirteen-year-old boys are in side-by-side beds, recovering from the flu in their private school’s sickroom.

“Coxeter, how do you imagine time travel would work?” asks John Petrie, one of the boys.

“You mean as in H. G. Wells?” says Donald Coxeter, the other boy. H. G. Wells’ classic science fiction book, The Time Machine, is a popular topic of conversation. Both boys believe time travel will eventually be possible. After a few seconds, Coxeter says, “I suppose one might find it necessary to pass into the fourth dimension.” That is the moment when he began forming ideas about hyperdimensional geometries.

Both boys were very bright. They started using the books and games by their beds to play around with ideas of higher dimensional space — spaces and dimensions that go beyond the ordinary three dimensions of natural

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Professor Emeritus H.S.M. Coxeter
B.A., Ph.D., D.Sc., LL.D., D. Math, FRS, FRSC H.S.M. Coxeter was born and educated in England, but his professional connections with North America began early. Shortly after finishing his doctoral studies at Cambridge University, and while he was a research fellow there, he spent two years as a research visitor at Princeton University. In 1936 he joined the Faculty of the University of Toronto, and despite numerous mathematical visits to centres around the world, has remained here ever since.

Undoubtedly the world's best known geometer, Professor Coxeter has made contributions of fundamental importance to the Theory of Polytopes, Non-Euclidean geometry, Discrete Groups, and Combinatorial Theory, to name the areas of mathematical research for which he is best known. Endowed with artistic gifts himself, particularly in music, he gives to all mathematics that he touches an aura of beauty. He is equally at home lecturing to colleagues at an international research conference, or to gifted high school mathematics students. Along with a large and gr