Alicia Boole Stott facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alicia Boole Stott
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| Born | 8 June 1860 |
| Died | 17 December 1940 (aged 80) |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for | Mathematics |
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Alicia Boole Stott (born June 8, 1860 – died December 17, 1940) was a brilliant Irish mathematician. Even though she never worked as a university professor, she made many important discoveries in math. She even received a special award called an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Alicia is famous for creating the word "polytope" to describe 3D shapes that exist in four or more dimensions. She was amazing at understanding four-dimensional geometry from a very young age.
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Early Life and Family
Alicia Boole was born in Cork, Ireland, on June 8, 1860. She was the third of five daughters. Her parents were both English and very smart. Her father was George Boole, a famous mathematician and logician. Her mother was Mary Everest Boole, who taught herself math and was also an educationalist.
Alicia's sisters were also notable. Lucy Everest Boole became a chemist and pharmacist. Ethel Lilian Voynich became a novelist.
After her father passed away suddenly in 1864, Alicia's family moved to London. Her mother became a librarian at Queen's College, London. Alicia and one of her sisters went to the school connected to Queen's College. However, Alicia never went to university. Her friends and family called her Alice, but she always used the name Alicia when she published her work.
Discovering Four-Dimensional Shapes
Alicia was the only one of her sisters who followed in her parents' footsteps in mathematics. Her mother, Mary Everest Boole, had always encouraged her children to learn about geometry. She would project shapes onto paper and use pendulums to show them how geometry works.
When Alicia was 17, her brother-in-law, Charles Howard Hinton, showed her some geometric models. This helped her to imagine things in a fourth dimension. She discovered that there are exactly six regular polytopes in four dimensions. These are like the 3D shapes we know, but in a higher dimension.
She found that these shapes are made up of different numbers of simpler shapes. For example, some are made of 5, 16, or 600 tetrahedra (pyramid-like shapes). Others are made of 8 cubes, 24 octahedra (eight-sided shapes), or 120 dodecahedra (twelve-sided shapes).
Another mathematician, Ludwig Schläfli, had made a similar discovery before 1850. However, his work was not yet published. Alicia didn't know about his work, and she didn't have the chance to study advanced mathematics. She came up with the word polytope because she didn't know Schläfli's term.
Alicia created 3D cross-sections of all six regular polytopes. She did this using only Euclidean and synthetic methods. This was because she had never learned analytic geometry, which uses algebra. She even made cardboard models of all these sections!
Later Work and Recognition
In 1889, Alicia started working as a secretary near Liverpool. The next year, in 1890, she met and married Walter Stott, who worked with numbers and statistics. They had two children, Mary and Leonard.
In 1895, Alicia learned about the work of Pieter Schoute. He was also studying cross-sections of regular polytopes. Schoute came to England and worked with Alicia. He convinced her to publish her amazing discoveries. She published two papers in Amsterdam in 1900 and 1910.
In 1914, the University of Groningen honored Alicia for her work. They invited her to their 300th anniversary celebration and gave her an honorary doctorate. This was a huge achievement for someone who had not attended university. After Schoute passed away in 1913, Alicia took a break from her math work.
In 1930, her nephew, Geoffrey Ingram Taylor, introduced her to Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter. He was another important mathematician. Alicia and Coxeter worked together on different math problems. Alicia made two more important discoveries about how to build shapes related to the golden section. She even presented a paper with Coxeter at the University of Cambridge. Coxeter later said that Alicia's strong and simple character, along with her many interests, made her an inspiring friend.
Legacy
Alicia Boole Stott passed away in Middlesex, England, in 1940.
In 2001, a roll of colorful drawings of polyhedra was found at Groningen University. Even though they weren't signed, everyone knew they were Alicia's work. This discovery led to new research by Irene Polo-Blanco. She wrote a chapter about Alicia's work in her 2007 book, Theory and History of Mathematical Models.
Alicia's son, Leonard, also had a pioneering spirit like his mother and grandfather. He helped with tuberculosis treatment and invented a special machine for it.
See also
In Spanish: Alicia Boole Stott para niños
