ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Herbert Federer

Okay, so imagine you have a big, big puzzle with a lot of tiny pieces. And these pieces, when you put them together just right, create a beautiful picture. Well, in a way, Herbert Federer was someone who liked to solve puzzles like this, but instead of regular puzzles with pictures on them, he liked to solve puzzles with shapes and spaces.

He would try to understand how different shapes and spaces fit together, and he did some really cool things that helped make this easier for other people to do too. Like, he created a way to measure how "curvy" something is, and another way to measure how bumpy or wrinkly something is.

One of the things he was really famous for is something called "geometric measure theory." This is a way of thinking about shapes and spaces that are really complicated, but have a lot of structure to them. It's sort of like being able to see how all the different pieces of the puzzle fit together in a really complicated and beautiful way.

He was a really smart and creative person, and his work has helped lots of other people solve their own puzzles about shapes and spaces, and helped them create new and amazing things.