{"id":10738,"date":"2020-06-03T17:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T00:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10738"},"modified":"2020-06-20T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T00:46:07","slug":"conway-knot-problem-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/06\/03\/conway-knot-problem-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Conway Knot Problem Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from WIRED<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Grad Student Solved the Epic Conway Knot Problem\u2014in a Week<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Piccirillo encountered the more than 50-year-old question by chance at a conference. Her solution relies on a classical tool called the knot trace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by ERICA KLARREICH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lisa
Lisa Piccirillo\u2019s solution to the Conway knot problem helped her land a tenure-track position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. PHOTOGRAPH: IAN MACLELLAN\/QUANTA MAGAZINE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

IN THE SUMMER\u00a0of 2018, at a\u00a0\u00a0conference<\/a>\u00a0on low-dimensional topology and geometry,\u00a0Lisa Piccirillo<\/a>\u00a0heard about a nice little math problem. It seemed like a good testing ground for some techniques she had been developing as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t allow myself to work on it during the day,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I didn\u2019t consider it to be real math. I thought it was, like, my homework.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question asked whether the Conway knot\u2014a snarl discovered more than half a century ago by the legendary mathematician John Horton Conway\u2014is a slice of a higher-dimensional knot. \u201cSliceness\u201d is one of the first natural questions knot theorists ask about knots in higher-dimensional spaces, and mathematicians had been able to answer it for all of the thousands of knots with 12 or fewer crossings\u2014except one. The Conway knot, which has 11 crossings, had thumbed its nose at mathematicians for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the week was out, Piccirillo had an answer: The Conway knot is not \u201cslice.\u201d A few days later, she met with Cameron Gordon, a professor at UT Austin, and casually mentioned her solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at WIRED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from WIRED A Grad Student Solved the Epic Conway Knot Problem\u2014in a Week Lisa Piccirillo encountered the more than 50-year-old question by chance at a conference. Her solution relies on a classical tool called the knot trace. by ERICA KLARREICH IN THE SUMMER\u00a0of 2018, at a\u00a0\u00a0conference\u00a0on low-dimensional topology and geometry,\u00a0Lisa Piccirillo\u00a0heard about a nice little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}