Editing Voronoi diagram (section)

==History and research==
Informal use of Voronoi diagrams can be traced back to [[Descartes]] in 1644.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Senechal |first=Marjorie |date=1993-05-21 |title=Mathematical Structures: Spatial Tessellations . Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams. Atsuyuki Okabe, Barry Boots, and Kokichi Sugihara. Wiley, New York, 1992. xii, 532 pp., illus. $89.95. Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Statistics. |url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.260.5111.1170 |journal=Science |language=en |volume=260 |issue=5111 |pages=1170–1173 |doi=10.1126/science.260.5111.1170 |pmid=17806355 |issn=0036-8075}}</ref> [[Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet]] used two-dimensional and three-dimensional Voronoi diagrams in his study of quadratic forms in 1850.
British physician [[John Snow (physician)|John Snow]] used a Voronoi-like diagram in 1854 to illustrate how the majority of people who died in the [[1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak|Broad Street cholera outbreak]] lived closer to the infected [[Soho#Broad Street pump|Broad Street pump]] than to any other water pump.

Voronoi diagrams are named after [[Georgy Voronoy|Georgy Feodosievych Voronoy]] who defined and studied the general ''n''-dimensional case in 1908.<ref>{{harvnb|Voronoï|1908a}} and {{harvnb|Voronoï|1908b}}.</ref> Voronoi diagrams that are used in [[geophysics]] and [[meteorology]] to analyse spatially distributed data are called Thiessen polygons after American meteorologist [[Alfred H. Thiessen]], who used them to estimate rainfall from scattered measurements in 1911. Other equivalent names for this concept (or particular important cases of it): Voronoi polyhedra, Voronoi polygons, domain(s) of influence, Voronoi decomposition, Voronoi tessellation(s), Dirichlet tessellation(s).