List by Author: Richard Elwes

Exotic spheres, or why 4-dimensional space is a crazy place
4D structure

Meet some strange shapes in the fourth dimension and find out why this dimension is different from all others.
Cantor and Cohen: Infinite investigators part I
What's the nature of infinity? Are all infinities the same? And what happens if you've got infinitely many infinities? In this article Richard Elwes explores how these questions brought triumph to one man and ruin to another, ventures to the limits of mathematics and finds that, with infinity, you're spoilt for choice.
Cantor and Cohen: Infinite investigators part II
Richard Elwes continues his investigation into Cantor and Cohen's work. He investigates the continuum hypothesis, the question that caused Cantor so much grief.
An enormous theorem: the classification of finite simple groups
Winner of the general public category. Enormous is the right word: this theorem's proof spans over 10,000 pages in 500 journal articles and no-one today understands all its details. So what does the theorem say? Richard Elwes has a short and sweet introduction.