Bonnie Stewart
Bonnie Madison Stewart (July 10, 1914 – April 15, 1994)[1] was a professor of mathematics at Michigan State University from 1940 to 1980.[2] He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1941, under the supervision of Cyrus Colton MacDuffee.[3]
Contributions
Number theory
In 1952, the first edition of his book, Theory of Numbers, was published.[4] Stewart's contributions to number theory also include a complete characterization of the practical numbers in terms of their factorizations, which he published in 1954, a year before Wacław Sierpiński's independent discovery of the same result.
Geometry
In 1970 he published a book, Adventures among the toroids. A study of orientable polyhedra with regular faces, in which he discussed what are now called Stewart toroids. The book was handwritten in calligraphy with many formulas and illustrations.
For perspective on his contribution to geometry, we have Plato (ca. 400 BC), whose name is attached to the 5 Platonic solids. Then we have Archimedes (ca. 250 BC), whose name is attached to the 13 Archimedean solids. Then we have Norman Johnson, who enumerated the 92 Johnson solids in 1966. And then we have sextillions of the Stewart toroids, described in 1970. All of these polyhedra have regular polygons as faces. The first three categories are all convex, whereas Stewart toroids have polygonal-faced tunnels.[2]
Selected publications
- B. M. Stewart, Theory of Numbers, Macmillan, 1952. 2nd ed., Macmillan, 1964.
- B. M. Stewart (1954), "Sums of distinct divisors", American Journal of Mathematics, 76 (4): 779–785, doi:10.2307/2372651, JSTOR 2372651, MR 0064800.
- B. M. Stewart, Adventures Among the Toroids (1970) This 5"x13" edition was self-published by the author (printed by The John Henry Company) and has no ISBN.
- B. M. Stewart, Adventures Among the Toroids, Revised Second Edition (1980) 11"x8.5". ISBN 0-686-11936-3, converted much later to ISBN 978-0-686-11936-4
References
- ↑ Bonnie Madison Stewart, findagrave.com, retrieved 2016-11-21.
- 1 2 "Bonnie Stewarts Hohlkörper", by Christoph Pöppe, Spektrumdirekt (website of the German edition of Scientific American).
- ↑ Bonnie Madison Stewart at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ↑ Review of Theory of Numbers by H. Bergström, MR 0050599.