Alicia Boole Stott
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Alicia Boole Stott was an Irish woman of the end of the 19th century who worked on four dimensional geometry. Although she never studied mathematics, nor went to a University, she learned herself to ``see'' the fourth dimension. She is remembered for finding all three dimensional sections of the four dimensional polytopes (i.e., the analogues of the Platonic solids in three dimensions), and for the discovery of many of the semi-regular polytopes. She built beautiful models of the sections of the polytopes. Due to her close collaboration with Professor P. H. Schoute of Groningen, a collection of some of her models is present at the University of Groningen.
Despite having no formal education in mathematics, she still possessed a great power of geometric visualization in hyperspace. From the age of seventeen until her death, she remained interested in regular and semi-regular four-dimensional polytopes and made several important discoveries in this area. For example, she showed that there were 6 regular polyhedra in 4-dimensional space and made physical models related to her work.
Despite having no formal education in mathematics, she still possessed a great power of geometric visualization in hyperspace. From the age of seventeen until her death, she remained interested in regular and semi-regular four-dimensional polytopes and made several important discoveries in this area. For example, she showed that there were 6 regular polyhedra in 4-dimensional space and made physical models related to her work.
