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About 65 years ago my local library at the time had a fascinating book that I borrowed many times.

I am trying to track it down but have forgotten both the title and the authors. What I can remember is that it contained diagrams of all the nets of the platonic solids and probably the more complex ones. There was also a chapter on interesting functions and their graphs like the leminiscate of bernoulli. And lots more. Although hard covered, it was about the size of a medium paperback.

The book was in the mathematics section of public library in Eltham, a suburb of South East London, UK. So not a major library, but hardly "small town" either. I guess they had about 3 or 4 shelves of maths books, perhaps 1/3 a bookcase among around 6 bookcases of science mathematics and engineering. I'm guessing their entire collection, fiction, non-fiction and reference was about 100,000 books.

I would have thought that the book was targeted at someone with knowledge and interest in mathematics, a teacher who wanted interesting projects (eg the nets) for their more advanced students or as general interest reading for the mathematics undergraduate. It was shelved along with books such as Littlewood's "A Mathematician's Miscellany", another of my favourites.
I'm sorry I can't remember any more about it, but I'd know it if I saw it.

Peter Jennings
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    Putting out some relevant books , which might help jog the memory cells : (A) Lawrence, J. Dennis "A catalog of special plane curves" [[ https://archive.org/details/catalogofspecial00lawr/mode/2up ]] (B) H S M Coxeter "Regular Polytopes" [[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_Polytopes_(book) ]] (C) Weyl, Hermann "Symmetry" [[ https://archive.org/details/symmetry0000weyl/mode/2up ]] – Prem Mar 13 '24 at 04:08
  • @njuffa Your wish is my command. Definitely not a children's book nor a reference one. – Peter Jennings Mar 13 '24 at 12:57
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    @Prem Thank for the suggestions. The first one was published too late and the third seems rather too specialised, but the second book, Coxter, whilst not being the book I'm looking for, is close. "My" book didn't go into higher dimensions and had a broader coverage. But your suggestions have jogged my memory, and a bit more research on books about mathematical models has let me answer my own question. – Peter Jennings Mar 13 '24 at 13:10
  • Nice to know that the memory jogging was successful here , @PeterJennings , eventually leading you from A to B to C to your Destination ! I will check out that book which looks quite interesting ! – Prem Mar 13 '24 at 14:25
  • @Prem I've just ordered a copy of the 3rd edition, but I've also found a PDF (downloadable) of the 2nd edition here https://archive.org/details/MathematicalModels-/page/n133/mode/2up Other PDFs may be available of different edityions. – Peter Jennings Mar 13 '24 at 15:22

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Thanks to the prompting in the the comments I have tracked it down to
Mathematical Models by H M Cundy & A R Rollett
Now in its 3rd edition (1981)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0906212200
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0906212202
Available from Amazon (other book sellers are available)
For anyone interested there is an article on Wikipedia about the book and a second one about H Martyn Cundy Sadly Mr Rollett only gets a mention, not his own entry - yet.
Like many popular texts, the book is usually known as "Cundy and Rollett" rather than it's given title. For other examples see "Kaye & Laby" and "Abramowitz and Stegun"

TLDR Cundy and Rollett were two mathematics teachers who compiled the book for use in senior schools (UK 6th Form) and undergraduates.

Peter Jennings
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