FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The tile, called a "hat" for its vague resemblance to a fedora, can be fitted together, but critically it does not seem to form any consistent pattern.
The problem of finding a shape to fulfill that role has befuddled mathematicians and scientists for over half a century until an interdisciplinary team along with Professor Chaim Goodman-Strauss of the University of Arkansas announced a solution to the "Einstein" problem
Professor Edmund Harriss of the Department of Mathematical Sciences said that "This is something I did not think I would see in my lifetime ... and it is beautiful that it was such an interdisciplinary effort. You have David Smith, a retired printing technician who had been seriously exploring ways to tile the plane for many years, who created the shape, and Joseph Myers, a software developer who found the two proofs, working together with Craig Kaplan, a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss."
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