Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes

Daina Taimina was born in Riga, Latvia in 1954--the same year as an International Congress of Mathematicians pivotal to non-Euclidean geometry (as she describes in the Introduction), so her influence on the hyperbolic plane almost seems fated. Now a professor of mathematics at Cornell University, Taimina regularly participates in art exhibitions and educational workshops related to her crocheted models. She was nominated as one of the "Most Innovative People and Organizations in the Science and Technology World in 2006."

Foreword by William Thurston. Introduction. What Is the Hyperbolic Plane? Can We Crochet It?. What Can You Learn from Your Model?. Four Strands in the History of Geometry. Tidbits from the History of Crochet. What is Non-Euclidean Geometry?. Pseudosphere. Metamorphoses of the Hyperbolic Plane. Other Surfaces with Negative Curvature. Looking for Applications of Hyperbolic Geometry. Hyperbolic Crochet goes Viral. Appendix: How to Make Models.