What is …Boy’s surface? (English) Zbl 1151.53306

Kirby, Rob

Notices Am. Math. Soc. 54, No. 10, 1306-1307 (2007).

From the introduction: Boy’s surface is an immersion of the real projective plane in 3-dimensional space found by Werner Boy in 1901 (he discovered it on assignment from Hilbert to prove that the projective plane could not be immersed in 3-space) [Über die Curvatura integra und die Topologie geschlossener Flächen. Diss. Göttingen (2001; JFM 32.0488.02), see also Math. Ann. 57, 151–184 (1903; JFM 34.0537.07)]. Many beautiful pictures of it can be found on the Internet, but here we will build it from the inside out, so as to see clearly the features of Boy’s surface.

MSC:

53A05	Surfaces in Euclidean and related spaces
57R42	Immersions in differential topology

Citations:

JFM 32.0488.02; JFM 34.0537.07