In college I wrote a geometry paper called "Spirals of Mutually Tangent Circles". (Continued below...)

In college I wrote a geometry paper called "Spirals of Mutually Tangent Circles," working out the math to arrange circles in a spiral. At the time I was lucky to be able to create line diagrams using a pen plotter. Now with modern web graphics I got to enjoy digging out the paper and building a 21st-century version of the final page.

Some mathematicians in England and Tennessee have since done a thorough analysis—Spiral hexagonal circle packings in the plane.

This page is dedicated to (the late) Joe Konhauser, an inspiring and merry problem solver who taught the advanced geometry class at Macalester College where I wrote the paper. Here's a picture of him from around then.