The fifty nine icosahedra

"The fifty nine icosahedra" is a book written and illustrated by H. S. M. Coxeter, P. Du Val, H. T. Flather and J. F. Petrie. It enumerates the stellations of the regular or "Platonic" icosahedron, according to a set of rules put forward by J. C. P. Miller.

The book was completely reset and the plates redrawn for the Third Edition, with additional reference material and photographs, by K. and D. Crennell.

Authors' contributions

Miller's rules

Although Miller did not contribute to the book directly, he was a colleague of Coxeter's and his contribution is immortalised in his set of rules for defining which stellation forms should be considered "properly significant and distinct":

:"(i) The faces must lie in 12 planes of faces of the regular icosahedron."

:"(ii) All parts composing the faces must be the same in each plane, although they may be quite disconnected."

:"(iii) The parts included in any one plane must have trigonal symmetry, without or with reflection."

:"(iv) The parts included in any plane must all be "accessible" in the completed solid (i.e. they must be on the "outside". In certain cases we should require models of enormous size in order to see all the outside. With a model of ordinary size, some parts of the "outside" could only be explored by a crawling insect)."

:"(v) We exclude from consideration cases where the parts can be divided into two sets, each giving a solid with as much symmetry as the whole figure. But we allow the combination of an enantiomorphous pair having no common part (which actually occurs in just one case)."

Rules (i) to (iii) are just requirements for icosahedral symmetry. Rule (iv) excludes buried holes, to ensure that no two stellations look outwardly identical. Rule (v) prevents any disconnected compound of simpler stellations.

Coxeter

Coxeter was the main driving force behind the work. He carried out the original analysis based on Miller's rules, adopting a number of techniques such as combinatorics and abstract graph theory whose use in a geometrical context was then novel.

He observed that the stellation diagram comprised many line segments. He then developed procedures for manipulating combinations of the adjacent plane regions, to formally enumerate the combinations allowed under Miller's rules.

His graph, reproduced here, shows the connectivity of the various faces identified in the stellation diagram (see below). The Greek symbols represent sets of possible alternatives:: λ may be 3 or 4: μ may be 7 or 8: ν may be 11 or 12

Du Val

Du Val devised a symbolic notation for identifying sets of congruent cells, based on the observation that they lie in "shells" around the original icosahedron. Based on this he tested all possible combinations against Miller's rules, confirming Coxeter's more analytical approach.

Flather

Flather's contribution was indirect: he made card models of all 59. When he first met Coxeter he had already made many stellations, including some "non-Miller" examples. He went on to complete the series of fifty-nine, which are preserved in the mathematics library of Cambridge University, England. The library also holds some non-Miller models, but it is not known whether these were made by Flather or by Miller's later students. [ [http://www.steelpillow.com/polyhedra/icosa/lost/lost.html#true True lost stellations] ]

Petrie

John Flinders Petrie was a lifelong friend of Coxeter's with a remarkable ability to visualise four-dimensional geometry, and he and Coxeter had worked together on many mathematical problems. His direct contribution to the fifty nine icosahedra was the exquisite set of three-dimensional drawings which provide much of the fascination of the published work.

The Crennells

For the Third Edition, Kate and David Crennell completely reset the text and redrew the illustrations and Plates. They also added a reference section containing tables, diagrams, and photographs of some of Flather's original models. It includes an index of all 59, numbered sequentially as they appear in the book. A few errors crept into the editing process, such as in some of the Plates and in the annotations to Fig.7.

List of the fifty nine icosahedra

Before Coxeter, only Brückner and Wheeler had recorded any significant sets of stellations, although a few such as the great icosahedron had been known for longer. Since publication of "The 59", Wenninger published instructions on making models of some; his scheme has become widely referenced, although he only recorded a few stellations.

Notes on the list

Index numbers are the Crennells' unless otherwise stated:

Crennell
*In the index numbering added to the Third Edition by the Crennells, the first 32 forms (indices 1-32) are reflective models, and the last 27 (indices 33-59) are chiral with only the right-handed forms listed. This follows the order in which the stellations are depicted in the book.Cells
*In Du Val's notation, each shell is identified in bold type, working outwards, as a, b, c, ..., h with a being the original icosahedron. Some shells subdivide into two types of cell, for example e comprises e₁ and e₂. The set f₁ further subdivides into right- and left-handed forms, respectively f₁ (plain type) and "f₁" (italic). Where a stellation has all cells present within an outer shell, the outer shell is capitalised and the inner omitted, for example a + b + c +e₁ is written as Ce₁.Faces
*All of the stellations can be specified by a stellation diagram. In the diagram shown here, the numbered colors indicate the regions of the stellation diagram which must occur together as a set, if full icosahedral symmetry is to be maintained. The diagram has 13 such sets. Some of these subdivide into chiral pairs (not shown), allowing stellations with rotational but not reflexive symmetry. In the table, faces which are seen from underneath are indicated by an apostrophe, for example 3'.Wenninger
*The index numbers and the numbered names were allocated arbitrarily by Wenninger's publisher according to their occurrence in his book "Polyhedron models" and bear no relation to any mathematical sequence. Only a few of his models were of icosahedra. His names are given in shortened form, with "... of the icosahedron" left off.Wheeler
*Wheeler found his figures, or "forms" of the icosahedron, by selecting line segments from the stellation diagram. He carefully distinguished this from Kepler's classical stellation process. Coxeter et. al. ignored this distinction and referred to all of them as stellations.Brückner
*Brückner made and photographed models of many polyhedra, only a few of which were icosahedra. "Taf." is an abbreviation of "Tafel", German for "plate".Remarks
*No. 8 was named the echidnahedron after an imagined similarity to the spiny anteater or echidna.

Table of the fifty nine icosahedra

See also

* List of Wenninger polyhedron models - Wenninger's book "Polyhedron models" included 21 of these stellations.

Notes

References

*Brückner, Max (1900). [http://books.google.com/books?id=dERmNV8lxt4C "Vielecke und Vielflache: Theorie und Geschichte"] . Leipzig: B.G. Treubner. ISBN 978-1418165901. de icon: [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25080888?tab=details WorldCat] English: "Polygons and Polyhedra: Theory and History". Photographs of models: [http://books.google.com/books?id=dERmNV8lxt4C&printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PRA1-PR5,M1 Tafel VIII (Plate VIII)] , etc. [http://bulatov.org/polyhedra/bruckner1900/index.html High res. scans.]
*Citation | last1=Coxeter | first1=Harold Scott MacDonald | author1-link=Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter | last2=Du Val | first2=P. | last3=Flather | first3=H. T. | last4=Petrie | first4=J. F. | title=The fifty-nine icosahedra | publisher=Tarquin | edition=3rd | isbn=978-1-899618-32-3 | id=MathSciNet | id = 676126 | year=1999 (1st Edn University of Toronto (1938))
*Wenninger, Magnus J. "Polyhedron models"; Cambridge University Press, 1st Edn (1983), Ppbk (2003). ISBN 978-0521098595.
* A. H. Wheeler, "Certain forms of the icosahedron and a method for deriving and designating higher polyhedra", Proc. Internat. Math. Congress, Toronto, 1924, Vol. 1, pp 701-708.

External links

* [http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/bulatov/index.html Example stellations of the icosahedron]
* [http://www.ac-noumea.nc/maths/amc/polyhedr/p_stico_.htm The fifty nine stellations of the regular icosahedron]
*
** MathWorld | urlname=Echidnahedron | title=Echidnahedron
* [http://mathserver.sdu.edu.cn/mathency/math/i/i011.htm Stellations of the icosahedron]
* George Hart, [http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/stellations-icosahedron-index.html 59 Stellations of the Icosahedron] - VRML 3D files.