The trigonometry of Escher's woodcut Circle Limit III
The artist M. C. Escher is famous among mathematicians for the patterns of his woodcuts, which in special cases seem to reinvent the tesselations of the hyperbolic plane first studied by Poincaré and Klein. (See, for instance, the intriguing pictures in Klein-Fricke: Theorie der elliptischen Modulfunktionen, 1890). Coxeter studies one particular woodcut called ``Circle Limit III. In this case, the circular arcs of the tesselation are not hyperbolic lines, but arcs meeting the limit circle at an angle of \(80^\circ\). The present article analyzes the structure of the tesselation of ``Circle Limit III using trigonometry and, surprisingly, the arithmetic of the biquadratic field \(\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{2}+\sqrt{3})\). Coxeter reports that Escher claimed to be ignorant of these mathematical tools. This is quite credible, but, on the other hand, this reviewer is convinced that Escher must have had at least (faint) knowledge of some of the figures of Poincaré-Klein-Fricke before he started his work on the circle limits. There are some formulas missing in the article on p. 45/46, these are supplied in the next issue Math. Intell. 19(1), p. 79.
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- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1533484 (Why is no real title available?)
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- A paradoxical view of Escher's angels and devils.
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