Mark Ronan's website
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Mark Ronan
lives in London, where he is honorary professor of mathematics at UCL. He
worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, in addition to holding academic positions in Berlin, in
Braunschweig, and in Birmingham where he was Mason Professor of Mathematics
in the early 1990s. His popular book, Symmetry
and the Monster was published in
hardback by Oxford University Press in 2006, and in paperback in 2007. Mark's 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. It is
now a standard reference on the subject, and in 2009 the University of
Chicago Press is publishing an updated edition with new material. 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. |
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, |
