Person: Wenninger, Magnus Joseph
Magnus Wenninger was an American mathematician who constructed polyhedron models, and wrote books about them.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Magnus attended St Anthony Elementary School in Park Falls from 1925 to 1933.
- When Magnus was about thirteen years old his parents saw an advertisement for Saint John's Preparatory School, Collegeville, Minnesota, in a German newspaper Der Wanderer.
- The school prepared boys for the Benedictine college, St John's University, so Magnus's parents thought this would be the right place for Magnus to receive his education.
- After graduating in 1937, Wenninger entered Saint John's University, Collegeville.
- When he entered the Order of Saint Benedict he was give the name Magnus so from this point on we will refer to him as Father Magnus.
- At this stage Father Magnus's education had not contained much mathematics.
- After being awarded an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Ottawa in 1946, Father Magnus was sent to St Augustine's College, Nassau, in the Bahamas.
- The headmaster of the school said he needed a teacher of English and a teacher of mathematics and gave Father Magnus the choice.
- In 1966 the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics published Father Magnus's Polyhedron Models for the Classroom.
- Completing the task of constructing the remaining ten uniform polyhedra proved difficult and R Buckley of Oxford University assisted Father Magnus by supplying the precise measurements.
- Father Magnus published Polyhedron models with Cambridge University Press in 1971.
- Father Magnus taught mathematics at St Augustine's College in Nassau until 1971, then spent the next ten years as Accountant and Comptroller for the College.
- Remarkably Father Magnus has published over 25 books and articles on mathematics, mostly on polyhedra.
- To end this biography we look at two further books published by Father Magnus.
- You may, like the reviewer, have made a great many models and may even be a byword for patience among your friends and yet you will surely feel faint at the thought of Wenninger's collection.
- such a beautiful, clear and expository study of the class of forms presented by Wenninger is a delight.
- The second of Father Magnus's two books we were going to look at is Dual models (1983).
Born 31 October 1919, Park Falls, Wisconsin, USA. Died 17 February 2017, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Usa
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
-
- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
