Review - Symmetry and the Monster

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Review - Symmetry and the Monster - Mark Ronan

There's something deeply satisfying about mathematical constructs that it's practically impossible to get your head round. It's why infinity makes such a good popular science topic, and that same potential is here in Mark Ronan's exploration of group theory, the Monster (a bizarre construct in 196,884 dimensions) and the way symmetry can be used as a mathematical tool. Told in the right approachable way, this could have been an absolutely superb book.

But - there has to be a "but" with that remark - unfortunately, despite the intriguing subject and the beguiling title, this isn't the book to do it. When Ronan is delving into the lives of some of the obscure but fascinating mathematicians who people this story (obscure to normal human beings, though demi-gods to mathematicians), he is fine. When we discover the sadly short life of Evariste Galois, who died (seemingly intentionally, as a sort of suicide protestor in a duel at the age fo 20, or the remarkable Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie, who sounds like a character out of a science fiction series, but in fact was a huge force in this area of mathematics, it's fine. Unfortunately, his clarity of writing totally disappears when he is covering the actual maths. Even the simplest of explanations - what groups are, for example - are overly complex and difficult to follow.

Unfortunately the result is something closer to many textbooks that good popular science. It tells you what you "need to know", but it doesn't give you any insight. It's opaque, nearly impossible to follow, piling on unnecessary terms and using examples that don't give any real understanding.

Of course the topic is complex, but that's not the point. So is quantum theory or an number of scientific and mathematical topics that have been covered well by popular science. Even the most complex theory can be put across well - but it takes a great popular science writer, and based on this evidence, Ronan doesn't qualify.

So, fascinating subject, but don't expect to come away enlightened.

Only in hardback

Reviewed by Peter Spitz

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