Publisher's Synopsis
The story of symmetry is a story of brilliant mathematicians, and a fascinating account of how mathematics illuminates a wide variety of disciplines. It explains how J.S. Bach composed, how the rubik's cube was invented and why we are sexually attracted to other people. Over the millennia, mathematicians had solved progressively more difficult algebraic equations until they came to the quintic equation. It resisted solution for several centuries, until two mathematical prodigies independently discovered that it could not be solved by the usual methods and opened the door to group theory. These young geniuses, a Norwegian named Niels Henrik Abel and the Frenchman, Évarist Galois, would both die tragically. Galois spent the night before his death in a duel (aged only twenty) scribbling another summary of his proof, writing in the margin of his notebook: "I have no time".
