Willem Abraham Wythoff (1865-1939)
- W. A. Wythoff (in Dutch: Wijthoff) was born in Amsterdam in 1865, the son of an operator of a sugar refinery. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Amsterdam in 1898. From 1899 to 1929, Dr. Wythoff was a collaborator of Revue Semestrielle des Publications Mathématiques, a forerunner of Mathematical Reviews.
- Willem Abraham Wythoff lived from 1865-1939 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
- Although many polytopes had originally been discovered by Alicia Boole Stott and English lawyer/recreational mathematician Thorold Gosset (1869-1962), in the early years of the 20th century, Archimedean polytopes in 4D are commonly known through the work of Wythoff since the 1920's. Furthermore Wythof designed a notation which is more suitable to describe semi-regularity than the Schläfli notation and is still in use today.
References
edit- W.A. Wythoff, A relation between the polytopes of the C600-family, Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Proceedings of the Section of Sciences, 20 (1918) 966–970.
- W.A. Wythoff, "A modification of the game of nim," Nieuw Archief voor wiskunde 2 (1905-07) 199-202.