In Januari’s issue of the Notices of the AMS there’s a paper by Mohammad Ghomi Dรผrerโs Unfolding Problem for Convex Polyhedra.
Here are the opening lines:
“Convex polyhedra are among the oldest mathematical objects. Indeed the five platonic solids, which constitute the climax of Euclidโs books, were already known to the ancient people of Scotland some 4,000 years ago; see Figure 1.”
It sure would make a good story, the (ancient) Scotts outsmarting the Greek in discovering the five Platonic solids. Sadly, the truth is different.
Once again, hat tip to +David Roberts on Google+ for commenting on the AMS announcement and for linking to a post by John Baez and a couple of older posts here refuting this claim.
Perhaps the most readable of the two posts is:
Scottish solids, final(?) comments
in which I tell the story of the original post and its aftermath. The bottom-line is this:
Summarizing : the Challifour photograph is not taken at the Ashmolean museum, but at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and consists of 5 of their artifacts (or 4 if ball 3 and 4 are identical) vaguely resembling cube, tetrahedron, dodecahedron (twice) and octahedron. The fifth Platonic solid, the icosahedron, remains elusive.
David Roberts drafted a letter to the editor of the Notices of the AMS.
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