Developable hypersurfaces and homogeneous spaces in a real projective space (Q1967146)

Developable surfaces have been the object of study for some time, mainly for two reasons: they are surfaces generated by straight lines, and they seem to be `scarce'. In fact, for dimension three in the real case, the only embedded developable surfaces are the cones, cylinders, and tangent developables of space curves [For an elementary treatment in \(\mathbb{R}^3\), see \textit{D. J. Struik}, Lectures on Classical Differential Geometry, 2nd. ed. (1988; Zbl 0697.53002)]. There are also examples in \(\mathbb{R}^4\) [\textit{R. Sacksteder}, Am. J. Math. 82, 609-630 (1960; Zbl 0194.22701); \textit{H. Wu}, Int. J. Math. 6, 461-489 (1995; Zbl 0839.53004); \textit{J. J. Stoker}, Differential Geometry (1989; Zbl 0718.53001)]. In other spaces, there are either existence theorems, or few examples. The author accomplishes this. He gives new examples of non-singular developable hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{R} P^n\). They turn out to be algebraic homogeneous spaces of groups \(SO(3), SU(3), Sp(3)\) and \(F_4\). This very readable article has an extensive bibliography.