Helaman Ferguson

Helaman Rolfe Pratt Ferguson (born 1940 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American sculptor and a digital artist, specifically an algorist.

He learned to work with his hands in an old-world style with earthen materials from his adoptive father who was a carpenter and stonemason by trade.

[1] In 1977, Ferguson and another mathematician, Rodney Forcade, developed an algorithm for integer relation detection.

In 2010, the Simons Foundation, a private institution committed to the advancement of science and mathematics, commissioned him to create the Umbilic Torus SC, a massive 8.5 m (28½') high sculpture in cast bronze and granite weighing more than nine tons.

[6] To create the huge sculpture, Ferguson wrote a program consisting of 25,000 movements to control a 4.9 m (16') x 6.1 m (20') robot arm and its affixed 30 cm (12") long industrial diamond-encrusted cutting tool.