Tetrahedra Packing
Back in 325 BC, Aristotle talked about which polyhedra can fill space, and noted that regular tetrahedra could fill space.
Around 1470 AD, Regiomontanus showed that Aristotle was wrong. He also found the spot where a statue on a pedestal appears the largest, as shown in the Demonstration “The Statue of Regiomontanus”.
In 1896, Minkowski tried to solve the problem of how well tetrahedra could pack. He failed. But he did introduce many valuable tools to math, such as “The Minkowski Sum of Two Triangles”.
In 1900, Hilbert tried the problem of tetrahedra packing and included it as a part of problem 18 in his list of unsolved problems. Hilbert is also famous for the Hilbert curve and “The Hilbert Hotel”.