Roswitha Blind

Roswitha Blind (also published as Roswitha Hammer) ^{[1] [2]} is a German mathematician, specializing in convex geometry, discrete geometry, and polyhedral combinatorics, and a politician and organizer for the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Stuttgart.

Mathematics

As Roswitha Hammer, Blind completed a Ph.D. in 1974 at the University of Stuttgart. Her dissertation, Über konvexe Strukturen und die Beziehungen zur elementaren Konvexität, concerned convex geometry and discrete geometry and was supervised by Kurt Leichtweiss. ^[2]

She is best known in mathematics for a 1987 publication with Peter Mani-Levitska in which, solving a conjecture of Micha Perles, she and Mani-Levitska proved that the combinatorial structure of simple polytopes is completely determined by their graphs. ^[3] This result has been called the Blind–Mani theorem ^[4] or the Perles–Blind–Mani theorem. ^[5]

In a 1979 publication, ^[6] she introduced a class of convex polytopes sometimes called the Blind polytopes, generalizing the semiregular polytopes and Johnson solids, in which all faces are regular polytopes. ^[7]

Politics

Blind became a city councillor in the Möhringen-Vaihingen district of Stuttgart in 2004, ^[8] stepping down from that seat in 2009 in order to become chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany local council group. ^[9] As councillor, in order to better serve the youth of her district, she became chair of a local football club, 1. FC Lauchhau-Lauchäcker, in 2006, also serving as president of the Stuttgart Sports Forum. ^[10]

She retired from politics in 2014, ^[8] and from her position with the football club in 2016. ^[10]

References

1. "Blind, Roswitha", MathSciNet, retrieved 2021-08-10
2. Roswitha Blind at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. Blind, Roswitha; Mani-Levitska, Peter (1987), "Puzzles and polytope isomorphisms", Aequationes Mathematicae , 34 (2–3): 287–297, doi:10.1007/BF01830678, MR   0921106 .
4. Kalai, Gil (1995), "Combinatorics and convexity" (PDF), Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Vol. 1, 2 (Zürich, 1994), Birkhäuser, Basel, pp. 1363–1374, MR   1404038
5. Gruber, Peter M. (2007), "Edge graphs of simple polytopes determine the combinatorial structure; the Perles–Blind–Mani theorem", Convex and Discrete Geometry, Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften [Fundamental Principles of Mathematical Sciences], vol. 336, Berlin: Springer, pp. 275–277, ISBN   978-3-540-71132-2, MR   2335496
6. Blind, R. (1979), "Konvexe Polytope mit kongruenten regulären ${\displaystyle (n-1)}$-Seiten im ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} ^{n}}$ (${\displaystyle n\geq 4}$)", Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici (in German), 54 (2): 304–308, doi:10.1007/BF02566273, MR   0535060
7. Klitzing, Richard, "Johnson solids, Blind polytopes, and CRFs", Polytopes, retrieved 2021-08-10
8. Müller, Kai (16 July 2014), "Vaihinger Stadträtin Roswitha Blind sagt Adieu: Familie gewinnt gegen Politik", Stuttgarter Zeitung (in German)
9. Dank an Dr. Roswitha Blind (in German), SPD Stuttgart Möhringen-Fasanenhof-Sonnenberg, 30 August 2009, retrieved 2021-08-10
10. Kratz, Alexandra (1 March 2016), "Jahre zwischen Hoffnung und Hoffnungslosigkeit: Die Alt-Stadträtin Roswitha Blind gibt im März 2016 ihr Amt als Vorsitzende des 1. FC Lauchhau-Lauchäcker ab", Stuttgarter Zeitung (in German)