the shape of space
Today I am digging out a historical milestone in mathematical visualization.
It is a video called “The shape of space” and was produced in 1995 by Stuart Levy, Tamara Munzner, and Lori Thomson with remote help from Charles Gunn, Delle Maxwell, and Jeff Weeks working at that time at the Geometry center at the University of Minnesota which closed -due to a lack of further funding – its doors in August of 1998. The production time was about four months and on April 25th, 1995 with rejoicing and popcorn, the movie had its debut at the Geometry Center. The video is based on the book “The shape of space” by Jeff Weeks – a freelance mathematician with a Ph.D. from Princeton, who produces also geometry games like us.
The video explains how one can use observed star configurations in order to determine the possible shape of our universe.
Charles Gunn is co-main developper of jReality, currently at the TU Berlin and was already mentioned in this randform post :)
Stuart Levy was already mentioned in this randform post.
And about Tamara Munzner I will write sometime soon…:)