10 Facts About Marjorie Rice

Marjorie Ruth Rice was an American amateur mathematician most famous for her discoveries of pentagonal tilings in geometry.

Marjorie Rice said later that she would rush to grab each issue from the mail before anyone else could get it, especially her son who subscribed to the magazine.

In 1975, Marjorie Rice read Gardner's July column, "On Tessellating the Plane with Convex Polygon Tiles", that discussed what kinds of convex polygons can fit together perfectly without any overlaps or gaps to fill the plane.

Marjorie Rice worked on the problem in her free time and through the 1975 holiday season "by drawing diagrams on the kitchen table when no one was around and hiding them when her husband and children came home, or when friends stopped by".

Marjorie Rice even developed her own system of notation to represent the constraints on and relationships between the sides and angles of the pentagons.

Marjorie Rice mailed her discoveries to Gardner using her own home-made notation.

Marjorie Rice had a keen interest in art, and had completed half of a correspondence course in commercial art before she married.

Marjorie Rice's discoveries were never published in Gardner's Scientific American columns, but were revealed in an addendum to his original column that was included in his 1988 collection of columns, where he declared her discoveries "fantastic achievements".

In 1999, one of Marjorie Rice's tilings became the basis for the floor in the foyer of the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America in Washington, DC.

Marjorie Rice had six children, of whom one did not live past infancy.