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The Heawood Graph is named after the
mathematician Percy John Heawood (1861-1955), who worked for many
years at Durham University. He is famous for his results on graph
colouring. In 1890 he published a paper in which he pointed out an
error in Kempe's approach to prove the Four-Colour Conjecture for planar
graphs. In the same paper he used Kempe's approach to prove the
Five-Colour Theorem for planar graphs, and he proved an upper bound for
the chromatic number of graphs embeddable on a surface of genus at least
one. As well as being a well-regarded member of the university community,
Heawood was a respected resident of Durham City. He raised the money
necessary to ensure that the foundations of Durham Castle were
permanently secured; without him the castle would not be standing today.
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