Mark Ronan's website
Symmetry and the Monster
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This book describes 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. Told here for the first time, it is a story that involves
brilliant yet tragic characters, curious number 'coincidences' that led to
breakthroughs in the mathematics of symmetry, and strange crystals that reach
into many dimensions. And it is a story that is not yet over, for we have yet
to understand the deep significance of the Monster – and its
tantalizing hints of connections with the physical structure of space-time.
Once we grasp the full nature of the Monster, we may well have revealed a
whole new and deeper understanding of our universe. |
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Published by Oxford University Press in the UK, and the USA:
hardback 2006, paperback 2007. For comments by the experts, click here. See also reviews on amazon.com
and reviews on amazon.co.uk