Geometrical analysis of radiolaria and fullerene structures: who gets the credit?

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) Combinatorial properties of polytopes and polyhedra (number of faces, shortest paths, etc.) (52B05) General biology and biomathematics (92B05) Molecular structure (graph-theoretic methods, methods of differential topology, etc.) (92E10)

Review text

In this short note, the author draws attention to one of the earliest mathematicians to understand the topological structure of buckminsterfullerenes and radiolaria (the latter being tiny planktonic microorganisms). The man in question is Dmitrij Mordukhaj-Boltovskoj (1876--1952), a widely educated Russian mathematician who wrote an almost forgotten book, \textit{The geometry of radiolaria}, in which he gave a detailed mathematical analysis of the geometry and topology of radiolaria, including the observation that ``any polyhedron with only degree-3 vertices and an arbitrary number of hexagonal faces should have 4 triangular or/and 6 tetragonal or/and 12 pentagonal faces. Though Mordukhaj-Boltovskoj was not the first to make this observation, the author considers it a valuable pioneering work in this field.

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