Kōkichi Sugihara (Japanese: 杉原厚吉, born June 29, 1948, in Gifu Prefecture)[1][2] is a Japanese mathematician and artist[3] known for his three-dimensional optical illusions that appear to make marbles roll uphill,[4][5] pull objects to the highest point of a building's roof,[6] and make circular pipes look rectangular.
[7] His illusions, which often involve videos of three-dimensional objects shown from carefully chosen perspectives,[3] won first place at the Best Illusion of the Year Contest in 2010,[4] 2013,[8] 2018,[9]and 2020[10] and second place in 2015[11] and 2016.
[7] Sugihara earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in mathematical engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1971, 1973, and 1980 respectively.
He then became an associate professor in the Department of Information and Computer Engineering at Nagoya University in 1981, and moved back to the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics at the University of Tokyo in 1986.
With three co-authors, he wrote Spatial Tessellations: Concepts and Applications of Voronoi Diagrams (Wiley, 1994; 2nd ed., 2009).