In July 1999, I enjoyed a short visit with Gavin Theobald and his wife Suzanne in Loughborough, England. I had wanted to meet him ever since he had sent me an email message, shortly before my book manuscript was due at the publisher, that he had improved on a large number of dissections. I was able to include some of the best of his dissections, primarily in chapters 11 and 12. His biography appears near the end of that latter chapter, on page 147.
Gavin works on graphics rendering engines. He gave me an impressive demonstration of his program to display a variety of regular and uniform polyhedra. He had also constructed physical models of some of them, and I photographed him holding what I believe is the great icosidodecahedron. We had a really nice time together, including an impromptu Saturday night walking tour of Loughborough, on the way back to the hotel. And he presented me the niftiest of gifts, a 3-piece improvement on one of the hingeable dissections in my next book.
Copyright 1999, Greg N. Frederickson.
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Dissections: Plane & Fancy
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Last updated August 23, 1999.