Figure 01 2-Dimensional Manifold [view large image] Shing-Tung Yau (, Figure 03) was born Chinese in 1949. He has been a professor of mathematics at Harvard since 1987 and is the current department chair. In 1976, he proves the existence of the geometric structure as surmised by the Calabi's conjecture.
This is a sciencey article, and here, right on cue, is a Calabi-Yau space! Watch really carefully and you might see it admit a Ricci-flat metric.
![Yau Yau](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125441107/719191195.jpg)
A Calabi-Yau manifold (from German Kabeljau = ) is a shape in whose purpose has never been found. They are often used to illustrate sciencey articles and look vaguely technical and cool, whilst never actually having any practical application. For a while it was believed that they were actually pictures of tiny little houses that and stuff lived in, but this was later shown to be complete nonsense. The majority of physicists are now resigned to the fact that no-one will ever know what Calabi-Yau spaces mean, where they come from, or how they got so damned twisty and cool-looking.