Origins & Early Life

Marjorie Ruth Rice (née Jeuck, 1923–2017) was an American amateur mathematician most famous for her discoveries of pentagonal tilings. Rice was born February 16, 1923, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Marjorie Rice was a San Diego mother of five, who had become an ardent follower of Martin Gardner's long-running column, "Mathematical Games", which appeared monthly, 1957–1986, in the pages of Scientific American magazine.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

By the 1970s, Gardner was a popular science writer and amateur mathematician. 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, 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. In his column, Gardner indicated that "the task of finding all convex polygons that tile the plane …. was not completed until 1967 when Richard Brandon Kershner … found three pentagonal tilers that had been missed by all predecessors who had worked on the problem".

Enduring Legacy & Impact

Gardner was repeating Kershner's claim that the list...

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