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Science 27 August 1999:
Vol. 285. no. 5432, pp. 1338 - 1339
DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5432.1338
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News of the Week

MATHEMATICS:
Proving the Perfection of the Honeycomb

Dana Mackenzie

Scientists have long assumed that a hexagonal lattice allows bees to store the most honey while using the least beeswax to separate them, but no one could prove it. Then last month, at the Turán Workshop in Mathematics, Convex and Discrete Geometry in Budapest, a mathematician presented his proof that a hexagonal honeycomb has walls with the shortest total length, per unit area, of any design that divides a plane into equal-sized cells.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)