EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: The history of Euler's polyhedron formula and the Euler characteristic
Speaker: Dave Richeson
Speaker Info: Dickinson College
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

In 1751 Euler discovered that any polyhedron with V vertices, E edges, and F faces satisfies V − E + F = 2, but the proof he gave was flawed. Many rigorous proofs followed, but so did a number of “counterexamples.” It took 150 years for mathematicians to fully understand this simple formula and to discover the more general Euler characteristic. Today Euler’s formula is held aloft as one of the most beautiful theorems in all of mathematics and the first great theorem of topology.