Mathematicians Get Crafty with Geometry

Mathematicians Get Crafty with Geometry The crinkled edges of a lettuce leaf curve and expand in a shape that has perplexed mathematicians for centuries. Those curves -- an example of a high-level geometry concept called the hyperbolic plane -- were not even defined by geometry theorists until the 19th century. And in the almost 200 years following, mathematicians struggled to find a way to model the complex shape known as the geometric opposite of the sphere. Taimina and her husband, fellow Cornell mathematician David Henderson, are the co-authors of Experiencing Geometry, a widely used textbook on both Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces.