Uniform 4-polytope

In geometry, a uniform 4-polytope (or uniform polychoron) is a 4-dimensional polytope which is vertex-transitive and whose cells are uniform polyhedra, and faces are regular polygons.

There are 47 non-prismatic convex uniform 4-polytopes. There are two infinite sets of convex prismatic forms, along with 17 cases arising as prisms of the convex uniform polyhedra. There are also an unknown number of non-convex star forms.

History of discovery

Convex Regular polytopes:

1852: Ludwig Schläfli proved in his manuscript Theorie der vielfachen Kontinuität that there are exactly 6 regular polytopes in 4 dimensions and only 3 in 5 or more dimensions.

Regular star 4-polytopes (star polyhedron cells and/or vertex figures)

1852: Ludwig Schläfli also found 4 of the 10 regular star 4-polytopes, discounting 6 with cells or vertex figures {5/2,5} and {5,5/2}.

1883: Edmund Hess completed the list of 10 of the nonconvex regular 4-polytopes, in his book (in German) Einleitung in die Lehre von der Kugelteilung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Anwendung auf die Theorie der Gleichflächigen und der gleicheckigen Polyeder Einleitung in die Lehre von der Kugelteilung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Anwendung auf die Theorie der Gleichflächigen und der gleicheckigen Polyeder, von dr. Edmund Hess. Mit sechzehn lithographierten tafeln..

Convex semiregular polytopes: (Various definitions before Coxeter's uniform category)

1900: Thorold Gosset enumerated the list of nonprismatic semiregular convex polytopes with regular cells (Platonic solids) in his publication On the Regular and Semi-Regular Figures in Space of n Dimensions.