Visit the Alan Holden Collection by Lauren Mitchell ’19

About This Project

Alan Holden can be considered as a chemist, physicist, crystallographer and even an artist. He was born in 1904 and passed away in 1985. Through his knowledge of crystallography he is mostly known for his development of a device that could locate submarines during World War II. During his retirement he became interested in the various ways in which polygons link together. When each plane of either a tetrahedron, octahedron, cube or dodecahedron rotates horizontally, the sides of the planes start to interlock creating various types of polylinks. The planes can also move in and out causing there be even more possible versions of polylinks.

Holden built these different models out of wooden dowels and mat board. The way in which these materials are manipulated shows a great deal of care and patience Holden must have had in order to construct the models.