The Equation that Couldn't be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry

Mario Livio

Souvenir Press, 2006 - Mathematics - 353 pages

The story of symmetry is a story of brilliant mathematicians, and a fascinating account of how mathematics illuminates a wide variety of disciplines. It explains how J.S. Bach composed, how the rubik's cube was invented and why we are sexually attracted to other people.Over the millennia, mathematicians had solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations until they came to the quintic equation. It resisted solution for several centuries, until two mathematical prodigies independently discovered that it could not be solved by the usual methods and opened the door to group theory. These young geniuses, a Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel and the Frenchman, Évarist Galois, would both die tragically. Galois spent the night before his death in a duel (aged only twenty) scribbling another summary of his proof, writing in the margin of his notebook: "I have no time".

About the author

Mario Livio was born in 1945 in Romania. When he was 5 years old, he immigrated with his grandparents to Israel. He received undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a M.Sc. degree in theoretical particle physics at the Weizmann Institute, and a Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics at Tel-Aviv University. He was a professor of physics at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology from 1981 until 1991. He is a senior astrophysicist at the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute. He has published over 400 scientific papers. He has also written several books including The Accelerating Universe, The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved, Is God a Mathematician?, and Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe. The Golden Ratio received the International Pythagoras Prize and the Peano Prize.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Equation that Couldn't be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
• Author: Mario Livio
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Souvenir Press, 2006
• ISBN: 0285637436, 9780285637436
• Length: 353 pages
• Subjects: Mathematics / General; Mathematics / Group Theory; Mathematics / Logic; Science / Physics / General