141. The Language of the Universe

Ken Ono is a math prodigy whose skills have helped produce a Hollywood movie and made Olympic swimmers faster. The number theorist tells Steve why he sees mathematics as art — and about his unusual path to success, which came without a high school diploma.  SOURCE:Ken Ono, professor of mathematics and STEM adviser to the provost at the University of Virginia.  RESOURCES:"‘Digital Twins’ Give Olympic Swimmers a Boost," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (Scientific American, 2024)."Swimming in Data," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2024)."Integer Partitions Detect the Primes," by William Craig, Jan-Willem van Ittersum, and Ken Ono (PNAS, 2024).The Man Who Knew Infinity, film by Matt Brown (2015)."Proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture," by John F. R. Duncan, Michael J. Griffin, and Ken Ono (Research in the Mathematical Sciences, 2015)."Ramanujan's Ternary Quadratic Form," by Ken Ono and K. Soundararajan (Inventiones Mathematicae, 1997).  EXTRA:"Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).