Surfaces53 of 113
Kummer surface
Ernst Kummer, 1864
A quartic with sixteen double points, the most a degree-four surface allows. The tetrahedral family here keeps all sixteen while the parameter μ² swells and shrinks the central body.
(x² + y² + z² − μ²)² − λ pqrs = 0, λ = (3μ² − 1)/(3 − μ²)
On mathcurve.com as Surface de Kummer
Elsewhere
1Work the library cites and does not hold: in copyright, never released as a file, or not a file at all. The cited shelf
- 1948
Shakespearean Equation, King Lear
Painted from Man Ray’s 1934 photograph of a plaster model at the Institut Henri Poincaré, a Kummer surface with eight real double points. He named it for the drips that ran down the canvas like tears.
Not yet checkedSuggested by an AI model, 2026-10-08
An AI reviewer had doubts, 2026-10-09: The holder's page supports the Kummer surface link, the plaster model at the Institut Henri Poincaré and the tears remark, since it says "In rendering this mathematical model on canvas, Man Ray removed the supports integral to the original object". Nothing in the evidence mentions a 1934 photograph as the source, so that specific claim is unsupported.