Helen Barton Lecture: “Mysteries of Unfolding Polyhedra”
We explore a puzzle whose origins date back 500 years, to the Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer, who cut open polyhedra and unfolded them to lay flat. With applications from airbag designs to origami sculptures, using theoretical and computational methods, we consider unfolding polyhedra in higher dimensions, providing what works and puzzling over what doesn’t.