Mathematicians and physicists today think and calculate in far more than three dimensions. In fact, string theory — which attempts to unify all the forces of nature — includes no fewer than eleven dimensions.
But in the early 19th century, even the idea of a fourth dimension was revolutionary. Imagining what it might look like required a great deal of thought and calculation for Groningen mathematician Hendrik Pieter Schoute.
Then he met Alicia Boole Stott — a woman from Great Britain who, without any formal education, built cardboard models that perfectly matched his complex calculations.
‘The woman who could see the fourth dimension’ is the eighth and final episode of the UKrant podcast ‘Echoes’, which tells stories from four centuries of the University of Groningen. In this episode, editors Christien Boomsma and Rob van der Wal introduce you to a British housewife who could visualise dimensions that other mathematicians could only calculate.