# Laves Graph

This picture by Greg Egan shows the Laves graph, a structure discovered by the crystallographer Fritz Laves in 1932. It is also called the ‘$\mathrm{K}_4$ crystal’, since is an embedding of the maximal abelian cover of the complete graph on 4 vertices in 3-dimensional Euclidean space. It is also called the ‘triamond’, since it is a theoretically possible — but never yet seen — crystal structure for carbon.

# Diamond Cubic

This picture by Greg Egan shows the pattern of carbon atoms in a diamond, called the diamond cubic. Each atom is bonded to four neighbors. This pattern is found not just in carbon but also other elements in the same column of the periodic table: silicon, germanium, and tin.

# Balaban 11-Cage

This picture shows part of a graph called the Balaban 11-cage. A (3,11)-graph is a simple graph where every vertex has 3 neighbors and the shortest cycle has length 11. A (3,11)-cage is a (3,11)-graph with the least possible number of vertices. The Balaban 11-cage is the unique (3,11)-cage.

# Heawood Graph

This is the Heawood graph. This graph can be drawn on a torus with no edges crossing in such a way that it divides the torus into 7 hexagons, each pair of which shares an edge. In 1890, Percy John Heawood proved that for any map drawn on a torus, it takes at most 7 colors to ensure that no two countries sharing a common boundary have the same color. The Heawood graph proves that the number 7 is optimal.

# Petersen Graph

Suppose you have a set with 5 elements. There are 10 ways to choose a 2-element subset. Form a graph with these 10 choices as vertices, and with two vertices connected by an edge precisely when the corresponding subsets are disjoint. You get the graph shown here, called the Petersen graph.