Christoph Bandelow
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Christoph Bandelow (18 January 1939—30 September 2011) was a German mathematician with a focus on probability theory, known as the author of books on Rubik's cubes and similar puzzles, as well as being one of the inventors of the megaminx.
Contents
Career
Bandelow studied mathematics and physics from 1958 at the University of Tübingen and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. In 1964 he graduated as a mathematician in Munich. From 1966 he was a research associate at the Leibniz-Rechenzentrum in Munich. In 1970/71 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. In 1972 he was Lecturer and 1973 Academic Senior Councillor at the University of Bochum at the Department of Stochastics.[2]
As a mathematician, Bandelow dealt with stochastic processes such as Markov chains and their simulation and the generation of random numbers. He wrote several books about the Rubik's Cube and similar puzzles like Rubik's Revenge, Rubik's Magic, explaining the underlying mathematics.[3]
Megaminx inventor
Bandelow was one of at least half a dozen of people who, within a few weeks in 1981, filed a patent application for a "Magic Dodecahedron". The patent attorney Walter Moll filed only a model without giving any technical details. This did not have any consequences. Bandelow's patent application (jointly with Helmut Corbeck, a student who made the drawings) was bought by ARXON (the German division of Ideal Toys). Together with Ideal Toy France and Ideal Toy Britain, ARXON organized the production of his dodecahedron in Hungary. A few weeks later, and completely independently, Uwe Meffert got his impulse from Kersten Meier and Udo Krell which led to the production of their Megaminxes in Hong Kong.[4]
Christoph's Magic Jewel
Bandelow also invented "Christoph's Magic Jewel", a rare truncated Octahedron, which he made by modifying pre-existing Magic Octahedrons.[5]
Puzzle seller
In 1985 Christoph Bandelow bought the unsold German stock of 5x5x5 cubes;[6] he sold them under the name "Giant Magic Cube".[7] In the 1990s he was still selling "5x5x5 cubes, skewbs, magic dodecahedrons and other stuff."[8]
Writings
Books:
- Einführung in die Cubologie (Introduction to Cubology), Vieweg 1981. (German; published in an English translation as: Inside Rubik´s Cube and Beyond, Birkhäuser 1982. ISBN 3-7643-3078-3 )
- Rubik's Magische Ringe, Falken Verlag 1982 (German; also translated into Portuguese)
- Mickey's Challenge, AOA Press Hongkong 1993 (English; translated into many other languages. A solution booklet sold with the spherical skewb, also known as "Sonic's Puzzle Ball")
Articles:
- Rubik's Zauberwürfel (German), in: Jahrbuch Überblicke Mathematik 1981, (Yearbook Overview of Mathematics 1981), BI Verlag
External links
- Dr. Christoph Bandelow, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Christoph Bandelow, Twisty Puzzles museum
