Short Summaries of Articles about Mathematics in the Popular
Press "Number Crunch: A Group of Mathematicians is Trying to Cut
the World's Lengthiest Theorem Down to Size," by Kim McDonald.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 1996, page A8. The notion
of a group is central to mathematics. In addition to providing a
way to represent mathematically the symmetries of objects such
as crystals, exploring the structure of groups has an inherent
mathematical fascination. The proof of the "Enormous Theorem,"
completed in 1980, is a patchwork of results that established a
classification of an important collection of groups: the finite
simple groups. Like the Scientific American piece on this topic
(see The Not So Enormous Theorem), this article describes
current efforts by mathematicians to condense, correct, and
complete the proof and publish it in a projected 12-volume set.
The present article provides a little more detail about what
groups are and why the theorem is significant.