No label defined (Q3973938)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0727.00012.] The author gives two examples of the application of a classic theorem in graph theory to what were, at one time, rather vexing problems in knot theory. The first example uses Kirchhoff's theorem from ``Über die Auflösung der Gleichungen, auf welche man bei der Untersuchung der linearen Verteilung galvanischer Ströme geführt wird'' [Ann. Phys. Chemie, II. Ser. 72, 497-508 (1847)] to establish Bankwitz' theorem that the determinant of a knot is not less than the number of crossings in a reduced alternating diagram of the knot (so if the diagram is nontrivial so is the knot). The second example uses Euler's theorem that \(V-E+F=1\) for a planar graph to show that there are at most five knots with a given complement. (The notions of thin presentation and Scharlemann cycle are both utilized in the proof).