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Daina Taimiņa
Daina Taimiņa (born August 19, 1954) is a Latvian mathematician, retired adjunct associate professor of mathematics at Cornell University, known for developing a way of modeling hyperbolic geometry with crocheted objects.
Taimiņa received all of her formal education in Riga, Latvia, where in 1977 she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Latvia and completed her graduate work in Theoretical Computer Science (with thesis advisor Prof. Rūsiņš Mārtiņš Freivalds) in 1990. As one of the restrictions of the Soviet system at that time, a doctoral thesis was not allowed to be defended in Latvia, so she defended hers in Minsk, receiving the title of Candidate of Sciences. This explains the fact that Taimiņa's doctorate was formally issued by the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. After Latvia regained independence in 1991, Taimiņa received her higher doctoral degree (doktor nauk) in mathematics from the University of Latvia, where she taught for 20 years.
Daina Taimiņa joined the Cornell Math Department in December 1996.
Combining her interests in mathematics and crocheting, she is one of 24 mathematicians and artists who make up the Mathemalchemy Team.
While attending a geometry workshop at Cornell University about teaching geometry for university professors in 1997, Taimiņa was presented with a fragile paper model of a hyperbolic plane, made by the professor in charge of the workshop, David Henderson (designed by geometer William Thurston.) It was made «out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together». She decided to make more durable models, and did so by crocheting them. The first night after first seeing the paper model at the workshop she began experimenting with algorithms for a crocheting pattern, after visualising hyperbolic planes as exponential growth.
The following fall, Taimiņa was scheduled to teach a geometry class at Cornell. She was determined to find what she thought was the best possible way to teach her class. So while she, together with her family, spent the preceding summer at a tree farm in Pennsylvania, she also spent her days by the pool watching her two daughters learning how to swim whilst simultaneously making a classroom set of models of the hyperbolic plane. This was the first ever made from yarn and crocheting.
The models made a significant difference to her students, according to themselves. They said they "liked the tactile way of exploring hyperbolic geometry" and that it helped them acquire experiences that helped them move on in said geometry. This was what Taimina herself had been missing when first learning about hyperbolic planes and is also what has made her models so effective, as these models have later become the preferred way of explaining hyperbolic space within geometry.
In a TedxRiga by Taimiņa she tells the story of how the need for a visual, intuitive way of understanding hyperbolic planes spurred her toward inventing crocheted geometry models. In the talk she also gives a basic introduction to hyperbolic geometry using her models as well as rendering some of the negative responses she initially received from some who viewed crocheting as unfitting in mathematics.
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Daina Taimiņa
Daina Taimiņa (born August 19, 1954) is a Latvian mathematician, retired adjunct associate professor of mathematics at Cornell University, known for developing a way of modeling hyperbolic geometry with crocheted objects.
Taimiņa received all of her formal education in Riga, Latvia, where in 1977 she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Latvia and completed her graduate work in Theoretical Computer Science (with thesis advisor Prof. Rūsiņš Mārtiņš Freivalds) in 1990. As one of the restrictions of the Soviet system at that time, a doctoral thesis was not allowed to be defended in Latvia, so she defended hers in Minsk, receiving the title of Candidate of Sciences. This explains the fact that Taimiņa's doctorate was formally issued by the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. After Latvia regained independence in 1991, Taimiņa received her higher doctoral degree (doktor nauk) in mathematics from the University of Latvia, where she taught for 20 years.
Daina Taimiņa joined the Cornell Math Department in December 1996.
Combining her interests in mathematics and crocheting, she is one of 24 mathematicians and artists who make up the Mathemalchemy Team.
While attending a geometry workshop at Cornell University about teaching geometry for university professors in 1997, Taimiņa was presented with a fragile paper model of a hyperbolic plane, made by the professor in charge of the workshop, David Henderson (designed by geometer William Thurston.) It was made «out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together». She decided to make more durable models, and did so by crocheting them. The first night after first seeing the paper model at the workshop she began experimenting with algorithms for a crocheting pattern, after visualising hyperbolic planes as exponential growth.
The following fall, Taimiņa was scheduled to teach a geometry class at Cornell. She was determined to find what she thought was the best possible way to teach her class. So while she, together with her family, spent the preceding summer at a tree farm in Pennsylvania, she also spent her days by the pool watching her two daughters learning how to swim whilst simultaneously making a classroom set of models of the hyperbolic plane. This was the first ever made from yarn and crocheting.
The models made a significant difference to her students, according to themselves. They said they "liked the tactile way of exploring hyperbolic geometry" and that it helped them acquire experiences that helped them move on in said geometry. This was what Taimina herself had been missing when first learning about hyperbolic planes and is also what has made her models so effective, as these models have later become the preferred way of explaining hyperbolic space within geometry.
In a TedxRiga by Taimiņa she tells the story of how the need for a visual, intuitive way of understanding hyperbolic planes spurred her toward inventing crocheted geometry models. In the talk she also gives a basic introduction to hyperbolic geometry using her models as well as rendering some of the negative responses she initially received from some who viewed crocheting as unfitting in mathematics.
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