monster group – Quanta Magazine

John Conway Solved Mathematical Problems With His Bare Hands

Kevin Hartnett — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 15:50:14 +0000

In modern mathematics, many of the biggest advances are great elaborations of theory. Mathematicians move mountains, but their strength comes from tools, highly sophisticated abstractions that can act like a robotic glove, enhancing the wearer’s strength. John Conway was a throwback, a natural problem-solver whose unassisted feats often left his colleagues stunned. “Every top mathematician was in...

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Symmetry, Algebra and the Monster

Patrick Honner — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 12:55:27 +0000

You could forgive mathematicians for being drawn to the monster group, an algebraic object so enormous and mysterious that it took them nearly a decade to prove it exists. Now, 30 years later, string theorists — physicists studying how all fundamental forces and particles might be explained by tiny strings vibrating in hidden dimensions — are looking to connect the monster to their physical...

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Moonshine Master Toys With String Theory

Natalie Wolchover — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 16:08:31 +0000

After the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in Iceland in 2010, flight cancellations left Miranda Cheng stranded in Paris. While waiting for the ash to clear, Cheng, then a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University studying string theory, got to thinking about a paper that had recently been posted online. Its three coauthors had pointed out a numerical coincidence connecting far-flung...

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Mathematicians Chase Moonshine’s Shadow

Erica Klarreich — Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:20:11 +0000

In 1978, the mathematician John McKay noticed what seemed like an odd coincidence. He had been studying the different ways of representing the structure of a mysterious entity called the monster group, a gargantuan algebraic object that, mathematicians believed, captured a new kind of symmetry. Mathematicians weren’t sure that the monster group actually existed, but they knew that if it did exist...

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