Willem Abraham Wijthoff
Willem Abraham Wijthoff , also quoted in English by Wythoff , (* 1865 in Amsterdam ; † 1939 there ) was a Dutch mathematician.
Wijthoff was the son of a worker in a sugar factory . He studied mathematics in Amsterdam, where he received his doctorate in 1898. From 1899 to 1929 he worked for the review journal "Revue Semestrielle des Publications Mathématiques".
Wijthoff dealt with number theory and, following Ludwig Schläfli, with the theory of polyhedra . Wijthoff found a construction (Wythoff's kaleidoscope construction) of regular polyhedra directly from their symmetry groups . His work was later continued by HSM Coxeter .
He is also known as the author of the Wythoff game : Two players take turns taking stones from two piles with any number of stones. Either take any number of stones from a pile or the same number from both piles. Whoever takes the last stone wins. The answer is given by Fibonacci numbers .
Web links
- Willem Abraham Wythoff (1865–1939) number-theorist - biography with photo at Clark Kimberling
- Wythoff construction (English Wikipedia); HSM Coxeter: Wythoff's construction for uniform polytopes , Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society Series 2,38, 1935, pp. 327-339; reprinted in HSM Coxeter: The beauty of geometry. Twelve essays , Dover, Mineola 1999, pp. 40-53
- Richard J. Nowakowski: The History of Combinatorial Game Theory ( PDF file, 1.5 MB), Proceedings of the Board Game Studies Colloquium XI, Lisbon 2008, January 24, 2009, with a comment on Wythoff's game
References and Notes
- ↑ Coxeter deals with Wijthoff's kaleidoscope construction on p. 196 in his Regular Polytopes , Dover 1973. On p. 261 he mentions a projection of the {5,3,3} polytop, drawn by Wijthoff with over 1200 edges.
- ^ Wijthoff: A modification of the game of Nim , Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde. Tweede reeks 7, 1907, pp. 199-202
- ^ Coxeter: The golden section, phyllotaxis, and Wythoff's game , Scripta Mathematica 19, 1953, pp. 135-143
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wijthoff, Willem Abraham |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Amsterdam |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1939 |
| Place of death | Amsterdam |