Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-308) and index
Contents:
Leonhard Euler and his three "great" friends What is a polyhedron? The five perfect bodies The Pythagorean brotherhood and Plato's atomic theory Euclid and his elements Kepler's polyhedral universe Euler's gem Platonic solids, gold balls, Fullerenes, and geodesic domes Scooped by Descartes? Legendre gets it right A stroll through Kèonigsberg Cauchy's flattened polyhedra Planar graphs, geoboards, and brussels sprouts It's a colorful world New problems and new proofs Rubber sheets, hollow doughnuts, and crazy bottles Are they the same, or are they different? A knotty problem Combing the hair on a coconut When topology controls geometry The topology of curvy surfaces Navigating in n dimensions Henri Poincarâe and th ascendance of topology The million-dollar question