Alicia (Boole) Stott (1860 - 1940)

Born 8 Jun 1860 in Cork, Ireland

Ancestors

Died 17 Dec 1940 at age 80 in Middlesex, London, England

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Alicia (Boole) Stott was born in Ireland.

Alicia (Boole) Stott is Notable.

Alicia was an Irish Mathematician.

Biography

Alicia Boole was a famous Irish-English mathematician

Early Life

Alicia Boole was born on 8 June 1860 to George Boole, a mathematician, logician and professor, and his wife, the self taught mathematician Mary Everest. She was one of five sisters, all with their own notable gifts. She was known to friends and family as Alice for her whole life, despite using "Alicia" professionally.

George Boole died in 1864, when Alicia was only four years old. Unable to support herself and her daughters, her mother moved the family to London. Mary Everest then became a librarian at Queen's College. However,she left Alicia behind in Ireland to live with her maternal grandmother in Cork. She was raised in her early years by her grandmother and great uncle but felt miserable and lonely.

Alicia was eleven when she went to London to join her family, who were living in poverty. Alicia later returned to Ireland in 1876, aged sixteen, for a short time to work in a children's hospital.

Career in Mathematics

Alicia had an interest in mathematics from a very young age. Her mother taught the Boole sisters basic geometry by projecting shapes onto paper and hanging pendulums. The girls were mainly tutored at home by their mother. Alicia's brother in law, Charles Howard Hinton, showed her geometric models when she was seventeen and she developed an ability to visualise a fourth dimension. She made many geometric structures in her early career. She coined the term "polytope" to describe a convex solid in four dimensions.

Alicia's family had not the money to send her to university. She worked as a secretary in Liverpool in her twenties. Her husband contacted Professor Pieter Schoute of Groningen University in 1895, who had studied the central sections of the regular polytopes. Schoute travelled to England to meet and work with Alicia. She published two research papers in Amsterdam in 1901 and 1910 at his encouragement. After his death in 1913, she took a hiatus from mathematical work.

She was invited to attend the University of Groningen's tercentenary celebrations, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by them in 1914.

In 1930, Alicia's nephew Geoffrey Ingram Taylor introduced her to Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter. They became friends and worked on many different problems together, writing a joint paper for the University of Cambridge. Coxeter wrote "The strength and simplicity of her character combined with the diversity of her interests to make her an inspiring friend".

Personal Life

While working in Liverpool, Alicia met an actuary named Walter Stott. They married a year later in 1890. They had two children, Mary (born 1891) and Leonard (born 1892). The family were quite poor despite Alicia's many achievements.

Death and Legacy

Alicia died in 1940 in Middlesex. In 2001, a roll of polyhedra drawings was discovered at Groningen University and identified as her work. This was used by Irene Polo-Blanco in her research. There is a chapter dedicated to Alicia in Polo-Blanco's 2007 book,Theory and History of Mathematical Models.

Sources

• Wikipedia
• https://scientificwomen.net/women/boole_stott-alicia-9
• http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Stott.html