Just months ago, an international team of four that includes Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Craig Kaplan discovered a single shape that tiles the plane — an infinite, two-dimensional surface — in a pattern that can never be made to repeat.
The discovery mesmerized mathematicians, tiling enthusiasts and the public alike.
The shape, a 13-sided polygon they called “the hat,” is known to mathematicians as an aperiodic monotile or an “einstein,” the German words that mean “one stone.”
