Mark Ronan
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Mark Ronan is a professor at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, and Honorary Professor of Mathematics at University
College London, having previously held academic positions in Berlin, in
Braunschweig, and in Birmingham where he was Mason Professor of Mathematics
in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His work is on geometric structures
exhibiting symmetry, on which he has written numerous research papers and a
textbook Lectures on Buildings published by Academic Press in 1989. 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, |
