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Platonic solids

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The name given to five convex regular polyhedra: the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron. The names of the polyhedra are Plato's names, who in his Timei (4th century B.C.) assigned them a mystical significance; they were known before Plato.

References

[a1] H.S.M. Coxeter, "Regular polytopes", Macmillan (1963) Zbl 0118.35902
[a2] D. Hilbert, S.E. Cohn-Vossen, "Geometry and the imagination" , Chelsea (1952) pp. 90ff (Translated from German) Zbl 0047.38806
How to Cite This Entry:
Platonic solids. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL: http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Platonic_solids&oldid=53807