Werner Boy (4 May 1879 to 6 September 1914) was a German mathematician, the discoverer and eponym of Boy's surface, a three-dimensional projection of the real projective plane without singularities, the first of its kind. He discovered it in 1901 after his thesis adviser, David Hilbert, asked him to prove that it was not possible to immerse the real projective plane in three-dimensional space. Boy sketched several models of the surface but was unable to find a parametric model; Bernard Morin found the first parametrisation in 1978. After his dissertation Boy worked as a high school teacher in Krefeld and later in Barmen, and he died as a soldier in the first weeks of World War I.
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He was the discoverer and eponym of Boy's surface-a three-dimensional projection of the real projective plane without singularities, the first of its kind.
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Attributed Works: Boy's Surface, LeadQuote, Attributed Works: Boy's Surface, Lead
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.
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