Part I
Who was the father of the ideal knot problem?
As I have discovered, we should rather
ask "Who was the mother of the ideal knot problem?"
Why? After an extensive study, I come
to the conclusion,
that the first person to think of
the knot tightening problem
could have been a young female
Polish shepherd met by Jozef Chelmonski.
Have a look at the picture below. The
gossamer knot is hardly visible, but it is there!
Gossamer with a
knot
(based on Gossamer
by Jozef
Chelmonski)
A similar problem, although in rather
different circumstances,
was also considered by an anonymous lady
known by Wojciech Gerson,
a Polish painter living at the end of
the IXX century.
Her quite original idea was to use the
viscous drag of the flowing water
to tighten and untangle knots.
The Rest with the
Entangled Trefoil
(based on The Rest
by Wojciech Gerson)
As it often happens, the same ideas
were born, independently, in many minds.
There exists
a convincing evidence, that also a lady known by Amadeo Modigliani
was
making some experiments with untangling
knots. Her position in the knot tightening debate
was, apparently, completely different.
