Norman Johnson (mathematician)

Norman Woodason Johnson (November 12, 1930 – July 13, 2017) was an American mathematician. He worked with shapes and their properties.

He taught and did research at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts for many years.

Johnson studied polyhedra, which are solid shapes with flat faces. He found new ways to understand these shapes. His work helps people in many fields, like computer graphics and building design.

His ideas still shape how we study geometry today.

For a different person with the same name, see Norman Lloyd Johnson.

Early life and education

Norman Johnson was born on November 12, 1930 in Chicago. His father owned a bookstore and published a local newspaper.

Johnson finished his undergraduate mathematics degree in 1953 at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He later earned a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He got his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1966. After that, he taught mathematics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts until he retired in 1998.

Career

In 1966, Norman Johnson found and listed 92 special 3D shapes made from regular polygons. These shapes are now called Johnson solids. Another mathematician named Victor Zalgaller checked Johnson’s work in 1969 and confirmed it was complete.

Johnson also named many interesting star-shaped 3D forms and their opposite shapes. These were published in books by Magnus Wenninger in 1971 and 1983.

Death and final works

Norman Johnson finished the final edits for his book Geometries and Transformations just before he passed away on July 13, 2017. He had also nearly finished writing a manuscript about uniform polytopes.

Works

Norman Johnson wrote many important papers about shapes and geometry. Some of his well-known works include:

• "A Geometric Model for the Generalized Symmetric Group"
• "The Faces of a Regular-Faced Polyhedron"
• "Convex polyhedra with regular faces"
• The theory of uniform polytopes and honeycombs
• Geometries and Transformations