Platonic solids
Los cinco sólidos platónicos
- Date
- c. 360 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Athens, Greece
- Credited to
- Theaetetus (construction and proof), Plato (popularised in the Timaeus)
- People
- 👤 Platón427 BCE–347 BCE👤 Teeteto416 BCE–369 BCE
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
There are exactly five convex regular polyhedra: the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron. It is one of the earliest complete classification theorems.
The proof that there are only five closes Book XIII of Euclid's Elements.
What it led to
- the theory of polyhedra
- Euler's formula
- the theory of symmetry groups
- crystallography
Built on
- Pythagoreans (dodecahedron)
- Thales's geometry
Made possible
- Euler polyhedron formula1750
- Kepler's cosmological models
- geodesic structures