Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't realize he died from COVID complications. That just makes it all the worse.
He was 82.
He was also a human being and he died.
Circle Packing
31–32 of 32 posts
Re: Circle Packing
#32Sphere packings are quite a deep and fascinating area of pure mathemaics. It has close relations to coding theory, lattice theory, number theory, modular forms. John Conway [1] (who recently passed away due to COVID) wrote a famous book about it: Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups -- which summarizes the subject concisely. A recent (2017) break through, was the proof that the Leech Lattice [2] yields the optimal sp…
One reason it’s fascinating for me is there are many unsolved problems that you can explain to lay people easily.
Sometimes it feels like it’s kind of trying to bait you into thinking: Hmm, that doesn’t seem that hard to prove, maybe I should spend some spare time on it.
edit: in case it’s not obvious I’m not trying to be presumptive The fart of trying some of these doesn’t last long .
I may fantasize for a minute after reading one, then remember there have been many “simple”problems that went unproven for hundreds of year or longer.
something like trisecting an angle with a protractor I would guess drove a few people to near insanity.