- When?
- March 21, 2016 7:30 PM
- Where?
- Academy Building, Broerstraat 5
What?
. Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy reveals how symmetry is a fundamental concept both in the arts and the sciences: from the walls of the Alhambra to the Higgs boson, from the music of Bach to deadly viruses. Based on his book Finding Moonshine he will tell the story of how mathematicians have produced a language to be able to explore, tame and classify this slippery concept. The hero of the story is the French nineteenth century revolutionary Evariste Galois who created this new mathematical language called group theory before being shot in a duel at the age of 20. His insight led mathematicians to the realisation that it was possible to create a Periodic Table of atomic symmetries from which all others are built. Called the Atlas of Finite Simple Groups the completion of this mammoth project is one of the great achievements of mathematics in the last century.