Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter

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Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter

Coxeter was born in Kensington, England, to Harold Samuel Coxeter and Lucy (née Gee). His father had taken over the family business of Coxeter & Son, manufacturers of surgical instruments and compressed gases (including a mechanism for anaesthetising surgical patients with nitrous oxide), but was able to retire early and focus on sculpting and baritone singing; Lucy Coxeter was a portrait and landscape painter who had attended the Royal Academy of Arts. A maternal cousin was the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.^[4][3]

In his youth, Coxeter composed music and was an accomplished pianist at the age of 10.

He worked for 60 years at the University of Toronto and published twelve books.

Personal life

Coxeter was a vegetarian. He attributed his longevity to his vegetarian diet, daily exercise such as fifty press-ups and standing on his head for fifteen minutes each morning, and consuming a nightly cocktail made from Kahlúa, peach schnapps, and soy milk.^[4]

Awards

Since 1978, the Canadian Mathematical Society have awarded the Coxeter–James Prize in his honor.

He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950 and in 1997 he was awarded their Sylvester Medal.^[6] In 1990, he became a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[9] and in 1997 was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.^[10]

In 1973 he received the Jeffery–Williams Prize.^[6]

A festschrift in his honour, The Geometric Vein, was published in 1982. It contained 41 essays on geometry, based on a symposium for Coxeter held at Toronto in 1979.^[11] A second such volume, The Coxeter Legacy, was published in 2006 based on a Toronto Coxeter symposium held in 2004.^[12]

Works

• 1940: "Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes I",
  doi:10.1007/BF01181449
• 1942: Non-Euclidean Geometry (1st edition),^[13] (2nd ed, 1947), (3rd ed, 1957), (4th ed, 1961), (5th ed, 1965), University of Toronto Press (6th ed, 1998), MAA.
• 1954: (with
  doi:10.1098/rsta.1954.0003
• 1949: The Real Projective Plane[14]
• 1957: (with W. O. J. Moser) Generators and Relations for Discrete Groups
  ISBN 0-387-09212-9
• 1961: Introduction to Geometry[16]^[17]
• 1963: Regular Polytopes (2nd edition), Macmillan Company
• 1967: (with
  S. L. Greitzer
  ) Geometry Revisited
• 1970: Twisted honeycombs (American Mathematical Society, 1970, Regional conference series in mathematics Number 4,
  ISBN 0-8218-1653-5
  )
• 1973:
  ISBN 0-486-61480-8
• 1974: Projective Geometry (2nd edition)
• 1974: Regular Complex Polytopes, Cambridge University Press
• 1981: (with R. Frucht and D. L. Powers), Zero-Symmetric Graphs, Academic Press.
• 1985: "Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes II", Mathematische Zeitschrift 188: 559–591
• 1987 Projective Geometry (1987)
  ISBN 978-0-387-40623-7
• 1988: "Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes III", Mathematische Zeitschrift 200: 3–45
• 1995: F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson and Asia Ivić Weiss, editors: Kaleidoscopes — Selected Writings of H. S. M. Coxeter.
  ISBN 0-471-01003-0
• 1999: The Beauty of Geometry: Twelve Essays, Dover Publications,
  ISBN 0-486-40919-8

See also

• Coxeter–James Prize
• Spiral similarity

References

1. ^ Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
2. ^ "Geometry Revisited". Mathematical Association of America. Archived from the original on 25 December 2018. Retrieved 25 December 2018.
3. ^
   ISSN 1748-8494
   .
4. ^
   doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/89876. (Subscription or UK public library membership
   required.)
5. ^
   ISBN 0-8027-1499-4
6. ^ ^{a b c d e f} O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
7. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1940-07170-8
   .
8. doi:10.1098/rsta.1954.0003
9. ^ Foreign Honorary Member elected 1990^{[permanent dead link]} 2016 American Academy of Arts & Sciences
10. ^ Office of the Governor General of Canada. Order of Canada citation. Queen's Printer for Canada. Retrieved 26 May 2010
11. doi:10.1017/s0013091500017016
    .
12. ISBN 978-0821837221
    .
13. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1943-07977-3
    .
14. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1950-09414-2
    .
15. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1958-10178-0
    .
16. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1962-10714-9
    .
17. JSTOR 2023059
    .

Further reading

• OCLC 62282754
  .
• OCLC 71436884
  .

External links

Archives at
Location University of Toronto Archives & Records Management Services  Identifiers 1183  Source Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter fonds
How to use archival material

• Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter archival papers held at the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services
• Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• H. S. M. Coxeter (1907–2003), Erich W. Ellers, Branko Grünbaum, Peter McMullen, Asia Ivic Weiss Notices of the AMS: Volume 50, Number 10.
• www.donaldcoxeter.com www.math.yorku.ca/dcoxeter webpages dedicated to him (in development)
• Jaron's World: Shapes in Other Dimensions, Discover mag., Apr 2007
• The Mathematics in the Art of M.C. Escher video of a lecture by H.S.M. Coxeter, April 28, 2000.