JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
“O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”–William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
This beautiful collection of knots and splices appeared on the front cover of Scientific American, March 18, 1871–a knot for every need. Knots become ever more complex at about the same time in the hands of the great mathematician and teacher, P.G. Tait. Tait was the major domo of knot classifiers so significant in the developing field of topology, and followed the work of Vandermonde, Gauss, and Kelvin. But here, in 1871, these were just beautiful and useful knots having open ends, and not having anything to do with the Tait conjecture–that would come later.
- For more on Tait, see: Are There More Knots Than People?