Mark Ronan's website
Symmetry and the Monster
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Comments by mathematicians and experts in the field 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 years of the chase and
the intriguing characters who led it, but also some of the more interesting
byways, including my personal favourite, the one I called "Monstrous
Moonshine". JOHN H. CONWAY, F.R.S. A spirit
of awe and adventure is marvelously evoked by Mark Ronan in this enthralling
little book. I couldn't put it down, even though I knew how the story ended.
... Ronan does a superb job of capturing the excitement of mathematical
discovery, as it emerges in a social network of letters and visits, phone
calls and lectures, inspired guesses and serendipitous encounters. ... Ronan
is also an inspired teacher, deftly foreshadowing themes to be developed
later, and patiently reminding the reader of ideas introduced earlier. There
are several threads here, very skillfully interwoven ... Symmetry and the
Monster is truly a page-turner. American
Mathematical Monthly ...
accessible, artfully written ... it stresses the human side of the drama.
Though I have been a long-time participant in the story, I found myself
learning much in every chapter and not wanting to put the book down. Notices of the
American Mathematical Society This book
tells [a] story ... over nearly two and a half millenia, from ... the
Platonic solids to the complete classification of the finite simple groups.
... There is a wealth of historical anecdotes and entertaining stories ...
The book is aimed primarily at a non-mathematical audience, but ... even an
expert ... may find something new in it. Mathematical
Reviews of the American Mathematical Society In this
remarkable [book], Mark Ronan takes on the biggest and most difficult theorem
in mathematics ... In just 250 small-format pages, he covers the whole
history of finite simple groups, from their discovery by Galois in the theory
of equations, ... to the amazing discovery of the 26 sporadic simple groups
beyond those arising from Galois theory and the Lie families. On the way, we
meet some jewels of geometry that range from the regular polyhedra to the
Leech lattice, and some of the most colorful figures in the mathematical
pantheon, from Evariste Galois to John Conway. ... I admire his handling of
[the subject] ... technical terms are avoided where a more evocative English
phrase exists. This informal language ... is the only way that outsiders can
be given an overview of this vast field—a field that occupies thousands
of pages when all the mathematical details are filled in. Society for
Industrial and Applied Mathematics [This book] is written in non-technical
language and yet conveys the excitement of a great mathematical discovery
usually accessible only to professional mathematicians. The author knew many
of the contributors, and this brings a nice personal touch to the narrative. Mathematical
Intelligencer Ronan unfolds
this story with admirable verve and clarity ... [His] exposition includes
entertaining glimpses of the personalities involved in this extraordinary quest. THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Ronan tells a
good story, and in doing so he paints a convincing picture of how
mathematicians conduct their research. ... I greatly enjoyed this book, and I
strongly recommend it to anyone interested in group theory and its history. London
Mathematical Society Symmetry and
the Monster tells the story of a decades-long project in which dozens of
mathematicians joined forces against a problem of extraordinary difficulty
... [It] succeeds in bringing to the fore an aspect of mathematics that some
popularizers miss—that math is not a science of monuments, but a living
tradition as vibrant as physics or ethics or law ... SEED Magazine Ronan does
a good job of describing the mathematics in broad strokes and giving a flavor
of what is happening and — more importantly — why mathematicians
get excited about these questions. Mathematical
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