Doris Schattschneider

Doris Schattschneider is an American mathematician and mathematics educator whose work connects tessellation geometry with the art of M. C. Escher.

Connect

M. C. Escher: M. C. Escher was a Dutch artist known for prints featuring tessellations, impossible structures, and transformations. Schattschneider helped explain the geometric principles behind Escher’s tessellations.
Tessellation: A tessellation is a covering of a plane or surface with shapes that leave no gaps or overlaps. Tessellations are the broad geometric subject that links her research and writing.
M. C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry: M. C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry is Doris Schattschneider’s study of the artist’s interlocking patterns and their mathematical structure. This book presents her close analysis of Escher’s symmetry drawings and tessellations.
Escher and the Mathematicians: Escher and the Mathematicians is an exhibition and publication exploring connections between M. C. Escher’s art and mathematics. Schattschneider’s scholarship helped establish a rigorous account of those connections.
Wallace Walker: Wallace Walker is an American artist and coauthor of a book on creating tessellations with paper templates. Their collaboration translated geometric tessellation patterns into a hands-on method.
Wallpaper group: A wallpaper group is one of the 17 symmetry groups describing repeating patterns in the plane. Its symmetry classification helps analyze recurring structures in Escher’s planar designs.
M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles: M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles is a book by Doris Schattschneider and Wallace Walker about folding linked polyhedral rings from paper. It applies geometric ideas associated with Escher through a constructible paper model.
Mathematical art: Mathematical art uses mathematical structures, processes, or ideas as part of artistic creation. Her work exemplifies scholarship that treats mathematical structure as integral to visual art.
H. S. M. Coxeter: H. S. M. Coxeter was a Canadian geometer known for work on polyhedra, symmetry, and tessellations. Coxeter’s mathematical writing helped frame the geometry of Escher’s work that Schattschneider studied.
Isometry: An isometry is a distance-preserving transformation, such as a rotation, reflection, or translation. Isometries describe how repeated figures move across a tessellated plane.