While attending a geometry workshop at Cornell University about teaching geometry for university professors in 1997, Taimiņa was presented with a fragile paper model of a hyperbolic plane, made by the professor in charge of the workshop, David Henderson (designed by
geometer William Thurston). It was made "out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together". She decided to make more durable models, and did so by crocheting them. This was what Taimina herself had been missing when first learning about hyperbolic planes and is also what has made her models so effective, as these models have later become the preferred way of explaining hyperbolic space within geometry. In a TedxRiga by Taimiņa she tells the story of how the need for a visual, intuitive way of understanding hyperbolic planes spurred her toward inventing crocheted geometry models. In the talk she also gives a basic introduction to hyperbolic geometry using her models as well as rendering some of the negative responses she initially received from some who viewed crocheting as unfitting in mathematics. In the foreword to Taimiņa's book Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes mathematician William Thurston, the designer of the paper model of hyperbolic planes, called Taimiņa's models "deceptively interesting". He attributed much of his view on them to how they make possible a tactile, non-symbolic, cognitively holistic way of understanding the highly abstract and complex part of mathematics non-euclidean geometry, is. Taimiņa has led several workshops at Cornell University for college geometry instructors together with professor David Henderson (of the aforementioned 1997 workshop and who later became her husband). Crocheted mathematical models later appeared in three geometry textbooks they wrote together, of which the most popular is
Experiencing Geometry: Euclidean and non-Euclidean with History. In 2020 Taimiņa published 4th edition of this book as open source Experiencing Geometry An article about Taimiņa's innovation in
New Scientist was spotted by the
Institute For Figuring, a small non-profit organisation based in
Los Angeles, and she was invited to speak about hyperbolic space and its connections with nature to a general audience which included artists and movie producers. Since then she has participated regularly in various shows in galleries in US, UK, Latvia, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Germany. Her artwork is in the collections of several private collectors, colleges and universities, and has been included in the American Mathematical Model Collection of the
Smithsonian Museum,
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, and
Institut Henri Poincaré. Her work and its far-flung influence has received wide interest in media. It has been written about in 'Knit Theory' in
Discover magazine and in
The Times, explaining how a hyperbolic plane can be
crocheted by increasing the number of stitches:
Margaret Wertheim interviewed Daina Taimiņa and David Henderson for Cabinet Magazine Later, based on Taimiņa's work, the Institute For Figuring published a brochure "A Field Guide to Hyperbolic Space". In 2005 the IFF decided to incorporate Taimiņa's ideas and approach of explaining hyperbolic space in their mission of popularizing mathematics, and curated an exhibition at Machine Project gallery, which was the subject of a piece in the
Los Angeles Times. Taimiņa's way of exploring hyperbolic space via crochet and connections with nature, combatting
math phobia, was adapted by
Margaret Wertheim in her talks and became highly successful in the IFF-curated Crochet Coral Reef project. ==Books==