You cracked a puzzle about the structure of strange crystals
called approximants that had gone unsolved for eight years. Tell
us more. Sven: Approximants are related to quasicrystals, which
are ordered atomic structures, but with symmetries that were
believed to be impossible, for example fivefold symmetry. The
approximants we studied have fivefold and 10-fold symmetry. The
result was Linus's name on a paper that was published in
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A this month.
What did you make of that? Linus: It's rare and strange and
cool. I don't know how many other 10-year-old kids have done
this. How did this father-son collaboration begin? Linus: Me and
my father did some sudoku. He was, like, "Let's put this number
here and this number here", but I said that he was wrong. Then
he was, like, "You're better at puzzles than me", and he asked
if I wanted ... To continue reading this article, subscribe to
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