Related papers: Notes on Beltrami's Essay
We review the extraordinary fertility and proliferation in mathematics and physics of the concept of a surface with constant and negative Gaussian curvature. In his outstanding 1868 paper Beltrami discussed how non-Euclidean geometry is…
This paper aims to provide an explanatory edition of Bolyai's 'Appendix Demonstrating the Absolute Science of Space', first published in 1832. In this treatise Bolyai began by extending neutral (or 'absolute') geometry by deriving a number…
How can we convince students, who have mainly learned to follow given mathematical rules, that mathematics can also be fascinating, creative, and beautiful? In this paper I discuss different ways of introducing non-Euclidean geometry to…
Mathematical objects are generally abstract and not very approachable. Illustrations and interactive visualizations help both students and professionals to comprehend mathematical material and to work with it. This approach lends itself…
Four points ordered in the positive order on the unit circle determine the vertices of a quadrilateral, which is considered either as a euclidean or as a hyperbolic quadrilateral depending on whether the lines connecting the vertices are…
In two papers titled "On the so-called non-Euclidean geometry", I and II, Felix Klein proposed a construction of the spaces of constant curvature -1, 0 and and 1 (that is, hyperbolic, Euclidean and spherical geometry) within the realm of…
The recognition that physical space (or space-time) is curved is a product of the general theory of relativity, such as dramatically shown by the 1919 solar eclipse measurements. However, the mathematical possibility of non-Euclidean…
In this paper, we examine the evolution of a specific mathematical problem, i.e. the nine-point conic, a generalisation of the nine-point circle due to Steiner. We will follow this evolution from Steiner to the Neapolitan school (Trudi and…
The geometry of closed surfaces equipped with a Euclidean metric with finitely many conical points of arbitrary angle is studied. The main result is that the image of a non-closed geodesic has 0 distance from the set of conical points.…
Eggleston (1957) proved that in the Euclidean plane the best approximating convex $n$-gon to a convex disc $K$ is always inscribed in $K$ if we measure the distance by perimeter deviation. We prove that the analogue of Eggleston's statement…
We elaborate on some important ideas contained in Lobachevsky's Pangeometry and in some of his other memoirs. The ideas include the following: (1) The trigonometric formulae, which express the dependence between angles and edges of…
This is an expository treatise on the development of the classical geometries, starting from the origins of Euclidean geometry a few centuries BC up to around 1870. At this time classical differential geometry came to an end, and the…
This paper introduces a method of calculating and rendering shapes in a non-Euclidean 2D space. In order to achieve this, we developed a physics and graphics engine that uses hyperbolic trigonometry to calculate and subsequently render the…
In many singular metric spaces, the regularity of a shortest-length curve is unknown. Algebraic varieties, or more generally sets defined by finitely many polynomial or real analytic equalities or inequalities, all locally partition into…
We derive basic differential geometric formulae for surfaces in hyperbolic space represented as envelopes of horospheres. The dual notion of parallel hypersurfaces is also studied. The representation is applied to prove existence and…
We describe all pseudo-Riemannian metrics on closed surfaces whose geodesic flows admit nontrivial integrals quadratic in momenta. As an application, we solve the Beltrami problem on closed surfaces and prove the nonexistence of…
The invention of non-Euclidean geometries is often seen through the optics of Hilbertian formal axiomatic method developed later in the 19th century. However such an anachronistic approach fails to provide a sound reading of Lobachevsky's…
We prove a pair of sharp reverse isoperimetric inequalities for domains in nonpositively curved surfaces: (1) metric disks centered at the vertex of a Euclidean cone of angle at least $2\pi$ have minimal area among all nonpositively curved…
On Boxing Day, 1838, Jacobi found a solution to the problem of geodesics on a triaxial ellipsoid, with the course of the geodesic and the distance along it given in terms of one-dimensional integrals. Here, a numerical implementation of…
Euclidean distance geometry is the study of Euclidean geometry based on the concept of distance. This is useful in several applications where the input data consists of an incomplete set of distances, and the output is a set of points in…