Steinitz's theorem

In polyhedral combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, Steinitz's theorem is a characterization of the undirected graphs formed by the edges and vertices of three-dimensional convex polyhedra: they are exactly the (simple) 3-vertex-connected planar graphs (with at least four vertices). That is, every convex polyhedron forms a 3-connected planar graph, and every 3-connected planar graph can be represented as the graph of a convex polyhedron. For this reason, the 3-connected planar graphs are also known as polyhedral graphs.Branko Grünbaum has called this theorem “the most important and deepest known result on 3-polytopes.”

The theorem appears in a 1922 paper of Ernst Steinitz, after whom it is named. It can be proven by mathematical induction (as Steinitz did), by finding the minimum-energy state of a two-dimensional spring system into three dimensions, or by using the circle packing theorem. Several extensions of the theorem are known, in which the polyhedron that realizes a given graph has additional constraints; for instance, every polyhedral graph is the graph of a convex polyhedron with integer coordinates, or the graph of a convex polyhedron all of whose edges are tangent to a common midsphere.

In higher dimensions, the problem of characterizing the graphs of convex polytopes remains open.

An undirected graph is a system of vertices and edges, each edge connecting two of the vertices. From any polyhedron one can form a graph, by letting the vertices of the graph correspond to the vertices of the polyhedron and by connecting any two graph vertices by an edge whenever the corresponding two polyhedron vertices are the endpoints of an edge of the polyhedron. This graph is known as the skeleton of the polyhedron.

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