The Society possesses a series of 14 wooden models of surfaces constructed under the direction of Professor Julius Plücker, in illustration of the theory developed in his posthumous work, "Neue Geometrie des Raumes gegründet auf die Betrachtung der geraden Linie als Raumelemente," Leipzig, 1869.
The circumstances surrounding the donation of the boxwood models is described in letters from Julius Plücker to Thomas Archer Hirst written during 1866 and 1867. The models themselves are described by Arthur Cayley in his paper ‘On Plücker’s Models of certain Quartic Surfaces’, published in the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society3 (1871), pp.281–285.
Images of all 14 of the Plücker boxwood models are shown below. They are currently housed at the Science Museum and these photographs are shown with their permission.
Submitted by Donald Eastwood on
