Quietly hyperbolic
- Renata Barros
- Jul 17
- 5 min read
The story of Daina Taimiņa, a hidden figure who made an impossible shape visible
Unfold
I’ve always been fascinated by mathematics. It was one of my favorite subjects in school, along with physics. Maybe that has something to do with the teachers I was lucky to have, they were some of the most passionate and encouraging people I’ve met. And today I see that, coincidently or not, they were great communicators.
One day, my high school math teacher told us about the fourth dimension, while drawing along on the white board. “How do you jump from one dimension to the other? Start with a line segment, one dimension. Hold one of the extremities and fold it, and you get a plane, a two-dimensional object. Do the same again, and you get a cube, a three-dimensional object. To reach the fourth dimension? Imagine doing the same, but starting with a cube.” Two decades later, I still remember how my mind was blown.
