Magnus Wenninger

Father Magnus J. Wenninger OSB (October 31, 1919 – February 17, 2017) was an American mathematician who worked on constructing polyhedron models, and wrote the first book on their construction.

Publications Wenninger's first publication on the topic of polyhedra was the booklet entitled, "Polyhedron Models for the Classroom", which he wrote in 1966. He wrote to H. S. M. Coxeter and received a copy of Uniform polyhedra which had a complete list of all 75 uniform polyhedra. After this, he spent a great deal of time building various polyhedra. He made 65 of them and had them on display in his classroom. At this point, Wenninger decided to contact a publisher to see if there was any interest in a book. He had the models photographed and wrote the accompanying text, which he sent off to Cambridge University Press in London. The publishers indicated an interest in the book only if Wenninger built all 75 of the uniform polyhedra.

Wenninger did complete the models, with the help of R. Buckley of Oxford University who had done the calculations for the ten snub forms by computer. This allowed Wenninger to build these difficult polyhedra with the exact measurements for lengths of the edges and shapes of the faces. This was the first time that all of the uniform polyhedra had been made as paper models. This project took Wenninger nearly ten years, and the book, Polyhedron Models, was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1971, largely due to the exceptional photographs taken locally in Nassau.

From 1971 onward, Wenninger focused his attention on the projection of the uniform polyhedra onto the surface of their circumscribing spheres. This led to the publication of his second book, Spherical Models in 1979, showing how regular and semiregular polyhedra can be used to build geodesic domes. He also exchanged ideas with other mathematicians, Hugo Verheyen and Gilbert Fleurent.

In 1981, Wenninger left the Bahamas and returned to St. John's Abbey. His third book, Dual Models, appeared in 1983. The book is a sequel to Polyhedron Models, since it includes instructions on how to make paper models of the duals of all 75 uniform polyhedra.