Timeline for Dimension leaps
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 19, 2011 at 0:53 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | According to Coxeter's Regular polytopes, Schläfli was the first, and the classification of regular polytopes was rediscovered by Stringham, Forchhammer, Rudel, Hoppe, Schlegel, Puchta, Cesàro, Curjel, and Gosset. | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 22:09 | comment | added | Emily Peters | According to Coxeter, Schlafli really should get the credit for this result. Though most of his work went unnoticed in his lifetime, he did solve the problem completely, and before anyone else. There doesn't seem to be any question of his answer not being considered a "proof." (Though I don't read German, so I can't say for sure). What is true, though, is that there's been a lot of debate over the meaning of "polytope" in the time since then (Schlafli apparently uses "finite region bounded by a finite number of hyperplanes.") | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 18:18 | comment | added | Ryan Budney | Schlafi seemed to have the basic ideas that go into the proof. But I've heard it claimed that Coxeter was the first. In Coxeter's books he attributes Schlafi, but I guess Schlafi's work wasn't noticed much during his era. | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 18:16 | comment | added | Charles Siegel | I don't know offhand. I know that Coxeter's "Regular Polytopes" uses the Schlafi symbols to do it, but as for who proved it first... | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 18:09 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Well, I don't know the answer to that question, but I do like John Baez's page on the subject here: math.ucr.edu/home/baez/platonic.html | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 17:54 | comment | added | Ryan Budney | Who was the first to classify the regular polytopes in R^n for all n? Schlafi? Stott? Coxeter? Is this an issue of what we consider a proof? | |
| Nov 13, 2009 at 16:13 | history | answered | Charles Siegel | CC BY-SA 2.5 |