> There was an interview with H.S.M. Coxeter in the Mathematical
> Intelligencer (vol.18, No.4, 1996) in which Coxeter speaks quite a
> bit about Petrie whom Coxeter met when he was 14.
In a web page on "Donald Coxeter Mathematician and Geometer" we read:
<q>
The Story
The aroma of antiseptic and crisp sheets mingles with the sooty smell of a
small coal-burning fireplace at the end of the infirmary room. "Coxeter,
how do you imagine time-travel would work?" says John Petrie.
"You mean as in H.G. Wells?" says Coxeter. The two 14-year-old boys are in
side-by-side beds recovering from the flu in their private school's
sick-room. H.G. Wells's classic science fiction story The Time Machine is a
popular topic of conversation. Both boys are very bright and believe time
travel will eventually be possible. "I suppose one might find it necessary
to pass into the fourth dimension," says Coxeter.
That is the moment when Coxeter began forming ideas of hyperdimensional
geometries. The boys had some books and games by their beds. They started
playing around with ideas of higher dimensional space. Eventually these
early musings lead Coxeter to his discoveries and books about regular
polytopes--geometric shapes that extend into the fourth dimension and
beyond.
</q>
http://fas.sfu.ca/css/gcs/css/gcs/scientists/Coxeter/coxeter.html
BTW, the originally published by Univ of Toronto Press, 1938, book:
H. S. M. Coxeter, Patrick du Val, H. T. Flather, and J. F. Petrie:
_The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra_ , was republished by Springer-Verlag, 1982.
APH