David Singmaster

David Singmaster
March 2006
Born	1939 USA
Occupation	Retired professor of mathematics
Known for	Mathematics of puzzles

David Breyer Singmaster (born 1939, USA) is a retired professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England, UK. A self-described metagrobologist, he is most famous for his cube notation (i.e., which letters denote which faces on the Rubik's Cube), his solution to the Rubik's Cube and his huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He is also interested in the history of computers.

In combinatorial number theory, Singmaster's conjecture states that there is a finite upper bound on the number of times a number other than 1 can appear in Pascal's triangle. Paul Erdős suspected that the conjecture is true, but thought it would probably be very difficult to prove. The empirical evidence is consistent with the proposition that the smallest upper bound is 8.

Books

• Notes on Rubik's magic cube, David Singmaster. Enslow Pub Inc, 1981. ISBN 0-89490-043-9.
• Handbook of Cubik Math, David Singmaster and Alexander Frey. The Lutterworth Press, 1987. ISBN 0-7188-2555-1.
• Rubik's Cube Compendium,Edited by David Singmaster Oxford University Press, 21 April 1988. ISBN 0-19-853202-4.

See also

• How to solve the Rubik's Cube

External links

• David Singmaster at the Mathematics Genealogy Project