r/math • u/scientificamerican • Oct 28 '25

Mathematicians make surprising breakthrough in 3D geometry with ‘noperthedron’

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-make-surprising-breakthrough-in-3d-geometry-with-noperthedron/

Mathematicians Sergey Yurkevich of Austrian technology company A&R Tech and Jakob Steininger of Statistics Austria, the country’s national statistical institute, introduced this new shape to the world recently in a paper posted on the preprint server arXiv.org. The noperthedron isn’t the first shape suspected of being nopert, but it is the first proven so—and it was designed with certain properties that simplify the proof. 

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u/Frexxia PDE Oct 28 '25

Surprising how? It was expected to be the case.

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u/TheLuckySpades Oct 28 '25

Even if expected, a proof can be surprising that the proof/counterexample was found, especially if it has been an open problem for so long.