David Singmaster

David Singmaster
Singmaster in 2006
Born(1938-12-14)14 December 1938[1][2]
Died13 February 2023(2023-02-13) (aged 84)
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Known forSingmaster's conjecture
Singmaster notation
History of mathematics
Mathematics of puzzles, especially the Rubik's cube
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsLondon South Bank University
Thesis On Means of Differences of Consecutive Integers Relatively Prime to m  (1966)
Doctoral advisorsDick Lehmer, Russell Lehman

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.

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.

  1. ^ Singmaster, David (April 2018). "An Extended Interview with David Singmaster". G4G Celebration (Interview). Interviewed by Dana S. Richards. Gathering 4 Gardner. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  2. ^ "AMS Updates: Death of AMS Members". Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 70 (7): 1147. August 2023.
  3. ^ O'Connor, J J; Robertson, E F (September 2023). "David Singmaster". University of St Andrews. Archived from the original on 28 May 2024. Retrieved 27 September 2024.