Euler's Polyhedron Formula

where V , E, and F are, respectively, the number of vertices, edges, and faces of p. The formula was first stated in print by Euler in 1758 [11]. The proof given here is based on Poincaré’s linear algebraic proof, stated in [17] (with a corrected proof in [18]), as adapted by Imre Lakatos in the latter’s Proofs and Refutations [15]. As is well known, Euler’s formula is not true for all polyhedra. The condition on polyhedra considered here is that of being a homology sphere, which says that the cycles (chains whose boundary is zero) are exactly the bounding chains (chains that are the boundary of a chain of one higher dimension). The present proof actually goes beyond the three-dimensional version of the polyhedral formula given by Lakatos; it is dimension-free, in the sense that it gives a formula in which the dimension of the polyhedron is a parameter. The classical Euler relation V − E + F = 2 is corresponds to the case where the dimension of the polyhedron is 3. The main theorem, expressed in the language of the present article, is