Norman Woodason Johnson () was a

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 ...

at Wheaton College,

Norton, Massachusetts Norton is a New England town, town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States, and contains the villages of Norton Center, Massachusetts, Norton Center and Chartley, Massachusetts, Chartley. The population was ...

Early life and education

Norman Johnson was born on in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. His father had a bookstore and published a local newspaper. Johnson earned his undergraduate mathematics degree in 1953 at

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowling ...

Northfield, Minnesota Northfield is a city in Dakota and Rice counties in the State of Minnesota. It is mostly in Rice County, with a small portion in Dakota County. The population was 20,790 at the 2020 census. History Northfield was platted in 1856 by John W. N ...

followed by a master's degree from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

. After graduating in 1953, Johnson did alternative civilian service as a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

. He earned his PhD from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1966 with a dissertation title of ''The Theory of Uniform Polytopes and Honeycombs'' under the supervision of H. S. M. Coxeter. From there, he accepted a position in the Mathematics Department of Wheaton College in Massachusetts and taught until his retirement in 1998.

Career

In 1966, he enumerated 92 convex non-uniform polyhedra with regular faces.

Victor Zalgaller Victor (Viktor) Abramovich Zalgaller ( he, ויקטור אבּרמוביץ' זלגלר; russian: Виктор Абрамович Залгаллер; 25 December 1920 – 2 October 2020) was a Russian-Israeli mathematician in the fields of ge ...

later proved (1969) that Johnson's list was complete, and the set is now known as the Johnson solids. Johnson is also credited with naming all the

uniform star polyhedra In geometry, a uniform star polyhedron is a self-intersecting uniform polyhedron. They are also sometimes called nonconvex polyhedra to imply self-intersecting. Each polyhedron can contain either star polygon faces, star polygon vertex figures, ...

and their

duals ''Duals'' is a compilation album by the Irish rock band U2. It was released in April 2011 to u2.com subscribers. Track listing :* "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "Amazing Grace" are studio mix of U2's performance at the Rose Bowl, P ...

, as published in

Magnus Wenninger Father Magnus J. Wenninger OSB (October 31, 1919Banchoff (2002)– February 17, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked on constructing polyhedron models, and wrote the first book on their construction. Early life and education Born to Ge ...

's model building books: ''Polyhedron models'' (1971) and ''Dual models'' (1983).

Death and final works

He completed final edits for his book ''Geometries and Transformations'' just before his death on , and nearly completed his manuscript on

uniform polytope In geometry, a uniform polytope of dimension three or higher is a vertex-transitive polytope bounded by uniform facets. The uniform polytopes in two dimensions are the regular polygons (the definition is different in 2 dimensions to exclude vert ...

Works

* * * * * * * * * * * *

References

External links

*
Norman W. Johnson Endowed Fund in Mathematics and Computer Science
at Wheaton College 1930 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians University of Toronto alumni Wheaton College (Massachusetts) faculty {{US-mathematician-stub