Content about “
group theory

News story

Changing perspectives

Henry Wilton has won a Whitehead Prize for work that combines geometry and algebra.
News story

Shattering crystal symmetries

In 1982 Dan Shechtman discovered a crystal that would revolutionise chemistry. He has just been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery — but has the Nobel committee missed out a chance to honour a mathematician for his role in this revolution as well?
Blog post
sphere

Maths in a minute: The fundamental group

Topology considers two objects to be the same as long as you can morph one into the other without breaking it. But how do you work with such a slippery concept? One useful tool is what's called the fundamental group of a shape.
News story

A Schock Prize for an enormous theorem

The Rolf Schock Prize in Mathematics 2011 has this week been awarded to Michael Aschbacher "for his fundamental contributions to one of the largest mathematical projects ever, the classification of finite simple groups".
Blog post

The little lemma that could — the work of Ngô Bào Châu

Results in mathematics come in several flavours — theorems are the big important results, conjectures will be important results one day when they are proved, and lemmas are small results that are just stepping stones on the way to the big stuff. Right? Then why has the Fields medal just been awarded to Ngô Bào Châu for his proof of a lemma?
News story

The little lemma that could — the work of Ngô Bào Châu

Results in mathematics come in several flavours — theorems are the big important results, conjectures will be important results one day when they are proved, and lemmas are small results that are just stepping stones on the way to the big stuff. Right? Then why has the Fields medal just been awarded to Ngô Bào Châu for his proof of a lemma?