The Platonic solids are a set of five regular, convex polyhedra. They are named after the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who believed that these shapes represented the fundamental building blocks of the universe. The five Platonic solids are the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. Each solid is made up of identical faces and vertices, and they have symmetrical properties. These solids have been studied for centuries and have applications in various fields such as mathematics, physics, and even architecture.