What are models for? Alexander Crum Brown's knitted mathematical surfaces (Q897020)

This paper examines the nature and purpose of various knitted mathematical models created by the Scottish chemist Alexander Crum Brown (1838--1922), now held by the Science Museum in London, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the School of Chemistry of the University of Edinburgh. The knitted models (as well as those produced by Crum Brown in leather and in papier-mâché) represent certain surfaces that are discussed in \textit{C. Brown}'s paper [``On a case of interlacing surfaces'', Proc.\ Roy.\ Soc.\ Ed.\ 13, 382--386 (1885--1886; JFM 17.0522.04)], a contribution to what we now term topology. The author argues that these models were not intended merely as visual aids, but rather as a line of enquiry in their own right: ``a practical form of topological research'' (p.\,66). Going further, the author then presents two different senses of the word `model': a `model' as a physical representation of a mathematical idea, and a `model' as a mathematical abstraction that seeks to describe a phenomenon from the material world. As a chemist who made extensive use of diagrammatic representations of molecules, Crum Brown was thus a modeller in both senses. The paper concludes by drawing connections between Crum Brown's use of mathematical modelling in chemistry and the early knot-theoretic work of his brother-in-law, the mathematical physicist P. G. Tait (1831--1901).