Existence of canonical metrics in non-Kähler geometry

Five sporadic simple groups were proposed in the 19th century and 21 additional ones arose during the period 1965–1975. Since the early 1950s, there has been much thought about the nature of finite simple groups and how sporadic groups are placed in mathematics. While in mathematics graduate school at the University of Chicago, I became fascinated with the unfolding story of sporadic simple groups. It involved multiple theories, detective work and experiments. In this article, I shall describe some of the people, important ideas and evolution of thinking about sporadic simple groups. Most should be accessible to a general mathematical audience.

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Published 18 October 2021