Mark Ronan's website
Symmetry and the Monster
|
|
|
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. |
|
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
The story in 100 words The Whole Story Group Theory The Rotations of a Cube The Monster Moonshine The Classification The Sporadic Groups The Mathematicians