Events & Calendars Math Colloquium: "Polyhedra: Plato, Archimedes, Euler"

A polyhedron is a three-dimensional analog of a polygon, such as a cube, pyramid or prism. This talk is about two special classes of polyhedra with elegant structures, and their study over the past 25 centuries. Regular polyhedra were known to Pythagoras and Plato, and semiregular polyhedra were introduced later by Archimedes. We will present all these regular and semiregular polyhedra and discuss their history. There will be some simple counting arguments to go with the many pretty pictures, but otherwise no prior mathematical background is required to understand this talk.

Rob Benedetto has been a professor of mathematics at Amherst College since 2002. Previously, he held postdoctoral positions at the University of Rochester and Boston University. His research is in number theory and dynamical systems.

*The link will be sent to the Math & Stats listserv on the day of the event. If you are not part of that group and would like to attend, please email kglista@amherst.edu and the link will be sent the day of the event.