Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The compact transverse cross-sections of a cylinder over a central ovaloid in Rn, n ≥ 3, with hyperplanes are central ovaloids. A similar result holds for quadrics (level sets of quadratic polynomials in Rn, n ≥ 3). Their compact transverse cross-sections with hyperplanes are ellipsoids, which are central ovaloids. In R3, Blaschke, Brunn, and Olovjanischnikoff found results for compact convex surfaces that motivated B. Solomon to prove that these two kinds of examples provide the only complete, connected, smooth surfaces in R3, whose ovaloid cross sections are central. We generalize that result to all higher dimensions, proving: If M^(n-1), n >= 4, is a complete, connected smooth hypersurface of R^n, which intersects at least one hyperplane transversally along an ovaloid, and every such ovaloid on M is central, then M is either a cylinder over a central ovaloid or a quadric.