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1860 – 1940England & Netherlands
Alicia Boole Stott
Shapes that can't exist in three dimensions can still be understood and counted.
A short story
An English-Irish mathematician without university training who developed an extraordinary ability to picture shapes in four dimensions. By visualising the three-dimensional cross-sections of four-dimensional objects, she discovered six new regular four-dimensional polytopes, and coined the word polytope itself. She built physical models of her shapes; some of them are still in the mathematics department at Cambridge today.
In their own words
I built the models in cardboard before I knew the equations.
Paraphrased: Alicia Boole Stott on her four-dimensional polytope work, 1900–1910.
The lab their idea turned into
Solid Lab
Count the corners. Count the edges. Count the faces. Watch the same number fall out every time.
Open Solid Lab →