Alan Schoen is best known for discovering (while working at NASA) a minimal surface that he named the gyroid. The name stems from the impression in the gyroid's structure that each continuous channel in the array, along different principal crystallographic axes, has connections to additional intersecting channels, which “gyrate” along the channel length.
Q. Why is it called a gyroid?
A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Schoen#Contributions
Alan Schoen is best known for discovering (while working at NASA) a minimal surface that he named the gyroid. The name stems from the impression in the gyroid's structure that each continuous channel in the array, along different principal crystallographic axes, has connections to additional intersecting channels, which “gyrate” along the channel length.