Friday, April 4, 2025

The mathematical couple solves the stern problem of the group’s theory – after 20 years of work

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But one of Mall’s graduates was in this matter. Britta späth.

“Our obsession”

In 2003, SPäth arrived at the University of Kassel to start a doctorate from Malle. She was almost perfect for working on McKay’s guess: even at high school she could spend days or weeks on one problem. She was particularly pleased with those that tested her strength, and tenderly recalls long hours spent searching for “tricks that in a sense are not so deep.”

SPäth spent time studying group teams as deeply as she could. After completing postgraduate studies, she decided to apply this knowledge to continue chipping to suppose McKay. “He has this crazy, really good intuition,” said Schaeffer Fry, her friend and colleague. “He is able to see that it will be like that.”

Thanks to the kindness of the Quanta magazine

A few years later, in 2010, SPäth started working at Paris Cité University, where she met Cabanes. He was an expert in a narrower set of groups in the center of the reformulated version of the McKay supposition, and SPäth often went to his office to ask him questions. Cabanes “has always protested”, these groups are complicated, my God, “he remembered. Despite the initial hesitation, he also behaved the problem. He became” our obsession, “he said.

There are four categories of Lie groups. Together SPäth and Cabanes began to prove the hypothesis for each of these categories, and they reported a few Main results Over the next decade.

Their work led them to a deep understanding of lies like groups. Although these groups are the most common components of other groups, and therefore with great mathematical interest, their representations are extremely difficult to explore. Cabanes and Späth often had to rely on opaque theories from various mathematics. But by digging these theories, they provided one of the best characteristics from these important groups.

When they did this, they began to meet and had two children. (Finally, they settled together in Germany, where they like to cooperate on one of three boards in their home).

Until 2018, they had only one category of Lie groups. When this happened, they will prove McKaya.

This last case took them six more years.

“Spectacular achievement”

The fourth kind of group of lies “had so many difficulties, so many bad surprises,” said Späth. (It did not help that in 2020 Pandemia maintained its two small children at home from school, making them difficult to work.) But gradually she and Cabanes managed to show that the number of representations of these groups matched the representation of figure normalizers – and that the representations match the necessary rules. The last thing has been completed. It appeared automatically that McKaya’s supposition was true.

In October 2023, they finally felt sure enough their proof to announce him in a room of over 100 mathematicians. A year later they published it online That the rest of the community could digest. “This is an absolutely spectacular achievement,” he said Radha Kessar Manchester University.

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