A Discovery in Architecture: 15th Century Islamic Architecture Presages 20th Century Mathematics

Figure 1. Archway from the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan, Iran, which was built in 1453 C.E. The larger pentagons outlined in pale blue were constructed using a large-scale girih tile pattern, and the small white pentagons were constructed using a small-scale girih tile pattern (Image courtesy of K. Dudley and M. Elliff).

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This article relates the discovery by two American scholars, Paul J. Steinhardt and Peter J. Lu (respectively from the department of physics at Princeton and Harvard universities) that medieval Islamic artists produced intricate decorative patterns using geometrical techniques that were not understood by Western mathematics until the 20th century.

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