> Please, help me with biographical informations on John Flinders Petrie
> (1907-1972), the son of a well-known egyptologist.
[...]
<q>
John Flinders Petrie, who first realized the importance of the skew
polygon that now bears his name, was the only son of Sir W. M.
Flinders Petrie, the great Egyptologist. He was born in 1907, and as
a schoolboy showed remarkable promise of mathematical ability. In
periods of intense concentration he could answer questions about
complicated four-dimensional figures by "visualizing" them. His skill
as a draughtsman can be seen in his unique set of drawings of stellated
icosahedra [fn 1]. In 1926, he generalized the concept of a regular
skew polygon to that of a regular skew polyhedron [fn 2]. He worked
for many years as a schoolmaster. In 1972, after a few months of
retirement, he was killed by a car while attempting to cross a motorway
near his home in Surrey.
</q>
footnotes:
1. Coxeter, Du Val, Flather, and Petrie 1, Plates I-XX
[= ______, The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra.
Univ. of Toronto Studies (Math. Series), 6(1938) 1-26]
2. Coxeter 9 [= ____, Regular Skew Polyhedra in Three and Four Dimensions.
Proceedings of the London Math. Soc. (2) 43(1937) 33-62]
H. S. M. Coxeter: Regular Polytopes. 3rd. ed.
New York: Dover, 1973, p. 32.
Antreas