Marjorie Rice

Marjorie Rice was an American amateur mathematician who discovered several families of convex pentagons that tile the plane.

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Type 13 pentagon: A family of convex pentagons that tile the plane, discovered by Marjorie Rice. This is one of the pentagon families Rice found while investigating the tiling problem.
Convex polygon: A polygon whose interior contains every line segment joining two points in it. Rice searched within the convex polygons that can tile the plane.
Martin Gardner: An American writer known for popularizing recreational mathematics through his Scientific American column. Gardner’s column publicized Rice’s pentagon discoveries to a wide mathematical audience.
Dorothy Wrinch: An English-born scientist and mathematician who pursued research across mathematics and biology. Her academic research career contrasts with Rice’s independent route into mathematical discovery.
Type 14 pentagon: A family of convex pentagons that tile the plane, discovered by Marjorie Rice. Rice identified this distinct family through systematic work on pentagon angles and sides.
Tessellation: A covering of a plane or surface by shapes with no gaps or overlaps. The tiling condition defines which pentagons count among Rice’s discoveries.
Mathematical Association of America: A professional organization that supports mathematics education, research, and communication in the United States. The association’s publications helped bring Rice’s work into mathematical circulation.
Hermann K. H. Schläfli: A nineteenth-century Swiss mathematician who studied polytopes and geometric structures. Earlier work on polygonal tilings forms part of the mathematical tradition Rice’s discoveries extended.
Type 15 pentagon: A family of convex pentagons that tile the plane, discovered by Marjorie Rice. This family is another of Rice’s discoveries in the classification of pentagonal tilings.
Interior angle: An angle formed inside a polygon by two adjacent sides. Angle constraints help determine whether copies of a pentagon can meet around vertices.