Daina Taimiņa

Lore & Background

Daina Taimiņa received all of her formal education in Riga, Latvia, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Latvia in 1977 and completing graduate work in Theoretical Computer Science in 1990. Due to Soviet restrictions, she defended her doctoral thesis in Minsk, receiving the title of Candidate of Sciences, with her doctorate formally issued by the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. After Latvia regained independence in 1991, she received a higher doctoral degree (doktor nauk) from the University of Latvia, where she taught for 20 years. She joined the Cornell Math Department in December 1996.

In 1997, while attending a geometry workshop at Cornell, Taimiņa was presented with a fragile paper model of a hyperbolic plane made by professor David Henderson, designed by geometer William Thurston. She decided to make more durable models by crocheting them, visualizing hyperbolic planes as exponential growth. The first night after seeing the paper model, she began experimenting with algorithms for a crocheting pattern. The following fall, while teaching a geometry class at Cornell, she spent the summer at a tree farm in Pennsylvania, crocheting a classroom set of models—the first ever made from yarn and crocheting. Her students reported that the tactile way of exploring hyperbolic geometry helped them acquire experiences that aided their understanding.

Reader's Guide

Daina Taimiņa's crocheted hyperbolic models have become a preferred way of explaining hyperbolic space within geometry. William Thurston called her models 'deceptively interesting,' noting they enable a tactile, non-symbolic, cognitively holistic understanding of non-euclidean geometry. Her work sparked interest in tactile mathematical exploration, making advanced topics accessible to audiences from age five up. Her models have been exhibited as art in galleries in the US, UK, Latvia, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, and Germany, and are held in collections including the Smithsonian Museum, Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, and Institut Henri Poincaré. The Institute For Figuring adapted her approach for their Crochet Coral Reef project. Her book 'Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes' won the 2009 Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year and the 2012 Euler Book Prize. She co-authored geometry textbooks with David Henderson, including 'Experiencing Geometry: Euclidean and non-Euclidean with History.'

Did You Know?

• Taimiņa's crocheted hyperbolic models were the first ever made from yarn and crocheting.
• William Thurston called her models 'deceptively interesting' for enabling tactile understanding of non-euclidean geometry.
• Her work has been included in the American Mathematical Model Collection of the Smithsonian Museum.