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Boy's Surface

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Boy's surface is an immersion of the real projective plane into three-dimensional space, discovered in 1901 by the German mathematician Werner Boy, who had been asked by his doctoral advisor David Hilbert to prove that no such immersion could exist. It was first parametrized explicitly by Bernard Morin in 1978, with a further parametrization later found by Rob Kusner and Robert Bryant, and it is one of only two possible immersions of the real projective plane having a single triple point. Unlike the related Roman surface and cross-cap, Boy's surface has no singularities beyond its self-intersections.

Facts
Classification
Object Kind
Geometric Object 1
Origin Year
1901 1
Connections

Associated With

Source Wikipedia: Boy's surface

In Branch

Source Wikipedia: Boy's surface

Is Kind Of Object

Entity-backed identity for the object-kind enum value this mathematical object already carries, resolved to a mathematics concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The object-kind fact itself stays on the object unchanged.

Sources
1. Wikipedia: Boy's surface
  • Lead paragraph
    Boy's surface is an immersion of the real projective plane in three-dimensional space.
  • History section
    It was discovered in 1901 by the German mathematician Werner Boy, who had been tasked by his doctoral thesis advisor David Hilbert to prove that the projective plane could not be immersed in three-dimensional space.
  • In Branch: Geometry, Lead sentence
    In geometry, Boy's surface is an immersion of the real projective plane in three-dimensional space.
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