Mark Ronan's website
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Mark Ronan lives in London, where he is an honorary professor of
mathematics at UCL. He is also Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, having previously held academic positions
in Berlin, in Braunschweig, and in Birmingham where he was Mason Professor of
Mathematics in the early 1990s. His research deals with geometric structures
exhibiting symmetry, on which he has written numerous research papers and a
textbook Lectures on Buildings, first published by Academic Press in 1989, and
republished by The University of Chicago Press in 2009, with new material by
the author. Besides mathematics, Mark reads Babylonian cuneiform and has
taught courses in ancient Mesopotamian literature. He also has a great love
of music and has acted in more than a dozen operas at the Lyric Opera of
Chicago, and danced in the Nutcracker. Mark Ronan's recent book, Symmetry
and the Monster was published in
hardback by Oxford University Press in 2006, and in paperback in 2007. |
This is the
story of a mathematical quest that began two hundred years ago in
revolutionary France, led to the biggest collaboration ever between
mathematicians across the world, and revealed the 'Monster' — not
monstrous at all, but a structure of exquisite beauty and complexity. 'This book tells for the first time the fascinating
story of the biggest theorem ever to have been proved. Mark Ronan graphically
describes not only the last few decades of the chase, but also some of the
more interesting byways, including my personal favourite, the one I called
"Monstrous Moonshine".' JOHN H. CONWAY, |
