Arthur Harold Stone (30 September 1916 – 6 August 2000) was a British
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
born in London, who worked at the universities of
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
and
Rochester
Rochester may refer to:
Places Australia
* Rochester, Victoria
Canada
* Rochester, Alberta
United Kingdom
*Rochester, Kent
** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area
** History of Rochester, Kent
** HM Prison ...
, mostly in
topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...
. His wife was
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
Dorothy Maharam.
Stone studied at
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
. His first paper dealt with
squaring the square
Squaring the square is the problem of tiling an integral square using only other integral squares. (An integral square is a square whose sides have integer length.) The name was coined in a humorous analogy with squaring the circle. Squaring the sq ...
, he proved the
Erdős–Stone theorem
In extremal graph theory, the Erdős–Stone theorem is an asymptotic result generalising Turán's theorem to bound the number of edges in an ''H''-free graph for a non-complete graph ''H''. It is named after Paul Erdős and Arthur Stone, who pr ...
with
Paul Erdős and is credited with the discovery of the first two
flexagon
In geometry, flexagons are flat models, usually constructed by folding strips of paper, that can be ''flexed'' or folded in certain ways to reveal faces besides the two that were originally on the back and front.
Flexagons are usually square or ...
s, a
trihexaflexagon and a
hexahexaflexagon while he was a student at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1939. His
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
thesis, ''Connectedness and Coherence'', was written in 1941 under the direction of
Solomon Lefschetz
Solomon Lefschetz (russian: Соломо́н Ле́фшец; 3 September 1884 – 5 October 1972) was an American mathematician who did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear o ...
. He served as a referee for ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' journal in the 1980s.
The Stone
metrization theorem
In topology and related areas of mathematics, a metrizable space is a topological space that is homeomorphic to a metric space. That is, a topological space (X, \mathcal) is said to be metrizable if there is a metric d : X \times X \to , \infty ...
has been named after him, and he was a member of a group of mathematicians who published pseudonymously as
Blanche Descartes. He is not to be confused with American mathematician
Marshall Harvey Stone
Marshall Harvey Stone (April 8, 1903 – January 9, 1989) was an American mathematician who contributed to real analysis, functional analysis, topology and the study of Boolean algebras.
Biography
Stone was the son of Harlan Fiske Stone, who w ...
.
See also
*
Ham sandwich theorem
In mathematical measure theory, for every positive integer the ham sandwich theorem states that given measurable "objects" in -dimensional Euclidean space, it is possible to divide each one of them in half (with respect to their measure, e.g. ...
References
*
*
*
External links
*
1916 births
2000 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century English mathematicians
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
British expatriate academics in the United States
English expatriates in the United States
Topologists
Mathematicians from London
Princeton University alumni
{{UK-mathematician-stub