Series 2 - Professional correspondence

1.27 m of textual records

This series comprises only a small portion of the voluminous professional correspondence Coxeter would have received and produced over his 60 years as a leading international geometer. Except for 4 cm, filed by year (1961-64, 1968-1975) and a smattering of pre 1980 letters filed in the alphabetical series, the majority of the correspondence is dated after Coxeter’s retirement in 1980 to his death in 2002. Nevertheless the 20 years for which correspondence is preserved here, does document the breadth of Coxeter’s professional activities and relationships. There is correspondence with many of his fellow mathematicians and academic from other disciplines such as physics. There are files on some of the best known including: Michael Atiyah, Harold Bohr, Henry Cartan, S. Chandresekhar, Freeman Dyson, Leopold Infeld, G.H. Hardy, Christopher Longuet-Higgins, Benoit Madelbrot, E.H. Neville, Linus Pauling, George Polya, D’Arcy Thompson, Frederick Soddy, Oswald Veblen and Hermann Weyl.

Filed alphabetical by correspondent, most files contain not only correspondence but supporting records that document such things as attendance at conferences, reviewing activities such as referee reports, related research notes, drafts of published articles and talks. There are invitations, correspondence with publishers including contracts, correspondence with professional associations, letters of recommendations and advice to professional and amateur mathematicians alike.

Some of the mathematical colleagues for which there are files include William Moser, his first Ph.D. student, John Synge, Istavan Hargittai, Paolo Dominici, Bezdek Karoly and Asia Weiss, his last PhD student and professor at York University.

Files are arranged alphabetically with the few miscellaneous and chronological files placed at the end of each accession.

Open