Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter 1907-2003
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"The chief reason for studying regular polyhedra is still the same as in the time of the Pythagoreans, namely, that their symmetrical shapes appeal to one's artistic sense ... Such an escape from the turbulence of ordinary life will perhaps serve to keep us sane."
Donald Coxeter, 1948, Regular Polytopes.
King of Infinite Space - Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry, by Siobhan Roberts, House of Anansi Press.
Siobhan Roberts' website.
In Siobhan's book there is a photograph of 'Coxeter striking a cerebral pose at Cambridge', p. 69 - quite a handsome fellow; also one of Donald and Rien at their wedding, p. 114 - she was a beauty; sorry I have no way to post them here. To the right is Siobhan herself.
Introduction to Geometry, by H.S.M. Coxeter, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd..
Back in the 1980's and 90's I was building all sorts of tetrahelix models; all possible spirals intersecting in a single tetrahedron and the like. Some of them were quite beautiful to me. My friend George and I developed a wireframe computer program to facilitate the investigation, now sadly lost. At one point I wrote him a letter wondering if the spiral vertices would ever repeat - and he answered with a reference to Introduction to Geometry. I can't remember the upshot anymore ... and the letter has been lost as well.
Bucky was going on about 'unzipping angles' and the like - I never really understood much of Buckminster Fuller and I was suspicious of his relationship with Kenneth Snelson and Tensegrity - it seemed to me that he took the idea from Snelson and didn't do much with it. I wish I had some pictures of those models - maybe I will build them again one of these days.
The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo's math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter
Bob Dylan, from Tombstone Blues
What does innocent flesh on the bone look like I wonder? Is this it?
(Jim Adams, Raymond Ellstad, Jerry Matchett, Yuri Bonder, Martin Kovalik, Adriano Batista).
What does innocent even mean? I only know what it is to my quite imperfect and febrile sensibility. Or am I just hung up on T&A? What is innocent and what is not? How do I know? Maybe it is some Alzheimer's precursor to be losing track of qualities; but it does remind me again of Steve Smith in Montreal in the mid-60's dying of cancer and writing (something like) this poem:
God's Kaliedescope
when my speck of green
first turned the brown of Job's dunghill
i looked up to curse
but then i saw
that in God's eye
all turns are just as beautiful
I came across this later on and just wanted to remember it: 20/10/06, Sandra Martin: Lindalee Tracey, Filmmaker and Writer 1957-2006, (Archive), Bio at White Pine Pictures, Magnolia Movies.
And this on Alanis Obomsawin: 21/10/06, Sarah Hampson, Love and genocide, (Archive), Wikipedia, Library and Archives Canada.
"The chief reason for studying regular polyhedra is still the same as in the time of the Pythagoreans, namely, that their symmetrical shapes appeal to one's artistic sense ... Such an escape from the turbulence of ordinary life will perhaps serve to keep us sane."
Donald Coxeter, 1948, Regular Polytopes.
King of Infinite Space - Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry, by Siobhan Roberts, House of Anansi Press.
Siobhan Roberts' website.
In Siobhan's book there is a photograph of 'Coxeter striking a cerebral pose at Cambridge', p. 69 - quite a handsome fellow; also one of Donald and Rien at their wedding, p. 114 - she was a beauty; sorry I have no way to post them here. To the right is Siobhan herself.Introduction to Geometry, by H.S.M. Coxeter, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd..
Back in the 1980's and 90's I was building all sorts of tetrahelix models; all possible spirals intersecting in a single tetrahedron and the like. Some of them were quite beautiful to me. My friend George and I developed a wireframe computer program to facilitate the investigation, now sadly lost. At one point I wrote him a letter wondering if the spiral vertices would ever repeat - and he answered with a reference to Introduction to Geometry. I can't remember the upshot anymore ... and the letter has been lost as well.
Bucky was going on about 'unzipping angles' and the like - I never really understood much of Buckminster Fuller and I was suspicious of his relationship with Kenneth Snelson and Tensegrity - it seemed to me that he took the idea from Snelson and didn't do much with it. I wish I had some pictures of those models - maybe I will build them again one of these days.The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone
Causes Galileo's math book to get thrown
At Delilah who sits worthlessly alone
But the tears on her cheeks are from laughter
Bob Dylan, from Tombstone Blues
What does innocent flesh on the bone look like I wonder? Is this it?
(Jim Adams, Raymond Ellstad, Jerry Matchett, Yuri Bonder, Martin Kovalik, Adriano Batista).
What does innocent even mean? I only know what it is to my quite imperfect and febrile sensibility. Or am I just hung up on T&A? What is innocent and what is not? How do I know? Maybe it is some Alzheimer's precursor to be losing track of qualities; but it does remind me again of Steve Smith in Montreal in the mid-60's dying of cancer and writing (something like) this poem:
God's Kaliedescope
when my speck of green
first turned the brown of Job's dunghill
i looked up to curse
but then i saw
that in God's eye
all turns are just as beautiful
I came across this later on and just wanted to remember it: 20/10/06, Sandra Martin: Lindalee Tracey, Filmmaker and Writer 1957-2006, (Archive), Bio at White Pine Pictures, Magnolia Movies.
And this on Alanis Obomsawin: 21/10/06, Sarah Hampson, Love and genocide, (Archive), Wikipedia, Library and Archives Canada.
