Click here for recent and upcoming talks.
Curious about the background image on this page (which might not be visible on a mobile device)?
Scroll down!
Curious about the background image on this page (which might not be visible on a mobile device)?
Scroll down!
click on the image to enlarge it
Like many of the images on this site, the background image on this page is by Swedish artist and art historian Oscar Reutersvärd, who created the first deliberately impossible figure in 1934, well before Roger Penrose and M. C. Escher began exploring similar ideas. (Nevertheless, Reutersvärd's first figure—an impossible triangle—has come to be known as the Penrose Triangle.) Throughout his life, Reutersvärd created over 4,000 different impossible figures. The background image on this page—whose original appears alongside this text (with a price tag in the lower left!)—is a developed version of the Reutersvärd-Penrose triangle in which the corners have themselves become mini impossible triangles.
(If you're having trouble seeing the impossibilities in the corners, try this.)
(If you're having trouble seeing the impossibilities in the corners, try this.)