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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
Four scientists at play
In 1939 four young men were thrown together in graduate school at Princeton. They came from diverse backgrounds and went on to have very different careers. But for a short while all of them played with straight strips of paper made into what became known as “flexagons.” The thread that runs through this story is that of four creative young men who played for a while with an intriguing toy and then went on to other creative ventures in mathematics, physics, statistics, and computer science. We present here a small bit from each of their life stories.
In 1939 Arthur H. Stone (1916–2000), then a newly transplanted Englishman, was beginning his PhD work with Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton. According to Paul M. Cohn's obituary of Stone,
Arthur Harold Stone … was one of the foremost general topologists of his time, and made significant contributions to a number of different parts of general topology. … In 1927 [he] won a LCC scholarship to Christ's Hospital (Horsham). This was a boarding school which has had such successful pupils as Philip Hall, Christopher Zeeman (later Sir Christopher) and D. G. Northcott (Stone's contemporary). The mathematics teaching was in the hands of C. A. J. Trimble, himself a Wrangler. Here, Arthur won prizes in almost all subjects except sports (though he was also good at rugger [rugby football]). […]
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