Professor Mark Ronan concludes the mathematical journey begun by the young Frenchman Galois in the 1830’s. Each successive generation of creative mathematicians has moved the quest further, and in 1973 Bernd Fischer discovered a structure of 196,883 dimensions. This was the Monster, and it was now that the mathematics of symmetry found a connection with the mathematical physics of string theory, encouraging one mathematician to hope that “Sometime in the 21st century physicists will stumble upon the Monster group, built in some unsuspected way into the structure of the universe.”
credits
from Symmetry & The Monster,
released December 23, 2010
Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3
Written & presented by Prof. Mark Ronan
Produced by Richard Bannerman