David Singmaster
David Breyer Singmaster (14 December 1938 – 13 February 2023) was an American-British mathematician who was emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. He had a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He was most famous for being an early adopter and enthusiastic promoter of the Rubik's Cube. His Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" which he began compiling in 1979 provided the first mathematical analysis of the Cube as well as providing one of the first published solutions. The book contained his cube notation which allowed the recording of Rubik's Cube moves, and which quickly became the standard.
David Singmaster | |
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Singmaster in 2006 | |
| Born | 14 December 1938 Ferguson, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | 13 February 2023 (aged 84) |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Known for | Singmaster's conjecture Singmaster notation History of mathematics Mathematics of puzzles, especially the Rubik's cube |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | London South Bank University |
| Thesis | On Means of Differences of Consecutive Integers Relatively Prime to m (1966) |
| Doctoral advisors | Dick Lehmer, Russell Lehman |
Singmaster was both a puzzle historian and a composer of puzzles, and many of his puzzles were published in newspapers and magazines. In combinatorial number theory, Singmaster's conjecture states that there is an upper bound on the number of times a number other than 1 can appear in Pascal's triangle.