Marjorie Rice Type 9
Marjorie Rice was a mother in San Diego that had subscribed to Scientific American for her kids partly so that she could read it while they were in school. One month she read a column by Martin Gardner (hero of recreational mathematicians everywhere) about a mathematician who had found all 8 convex pentagons that tile the plane. (Judged to be different if the pattern they used to fill the plane was different.) As she started playing with the math with a new technique all her own, she discovered 4 more. Though she never agreed to lecture on her methods, she did share with others who wrote and presented them, and would occasionally go to receive an honor she was given. She also wrote in an essay, “I became fascinated by the subject and wanted to understand what made each type [of pentagon] unique. Lacking a mathematical background, I developed my own notation system and in a few months discovered a new type.” In that short time she discovered what are now known as types 9, 11,12, and 13.
Find out more in this nice Quanta article.
To see how tricky these are to make, try to get B and F to align. Be encourage or dismayed that there are an infinite variety of type 9 pentagons!