http://ift.tt/2xVisnb Getting mathematics into Nature (the journal) is next to impossible. Ask David Mumford and John Tate about it. Last month, John Duncan , Michael Mertens and Ken Ono managed to do just that. Inevitably, they had to suffer through a photoshoot and give their university’s PR-people some soundbites. CAPTION In the simplest terms, an elliptic curve is a doughnut shape with carefully placed points, explain Emory University mathematicians Ken Ono, left, and John Duncan, right. “The whole game in the math of elliptic curves is determining whether the doughnut has sprinkles and, if so, where exactly the sprinkles are placed,” Duncan says. CAPTION “Imagine you are holding a doughnut in the dark,” Emory University mathematician Ken Ono says. “You wouldn’t even be able to decide whether it has any sprinkles. But the information in our O’Nan moonshine allows us to ‘see’ our mathematical doughnuts clearly by giving us a wealth of information about the points on ell...
