Imagine a giant snowflake in 196884 dimensions This is the story of a mathematical quest that began two hundred years ago in revolutionary France led to the biggest collaboration ever between mathematicians across the world & revealed the ' Monster'
- not monstrous at all but a structure of exquisite beauty & complexity Told here for the first time in accessible prose it is a story that involves brilliant yet tragic characters curious number 'coincidences' that led to breakthroughs in the mathematics of symmetry & strange crystals that reach into many
Dimensions & it is a story that is not yet over for we have yet to understand the deep significance of the Monster
- & its tantalizing hints of connections with the physical structure of spacetime Once we understand the full nature of the Monster we may well have revealed a whole new & deeper understanding of the nature of our Universe