Mario Livio Quote

Galois's ideas, with all their brilliance, did not appear out of thin air. They addressed a problem whose roots could be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. Still, the revolution that Galois had started grouped together entire domains that were previously unrelated. Much like the Cambrian explosion-that stunning burst of diversification in life forms on Earth-the abstraction of group theory opened windows into an infinity of truths. Fields as far apart as the laws of nature and music suddenly became mysteriously connected. The Tower of Babel of symmetries miraculously fused into a single language.

Mario Livio

Galois's ideas, with all their brilliance, did not appear out of thin air. They addressed a problem whose roots could be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. Still, the revolution that Galois had started grouped together entire domains that were previously unrelated. Much like the Cambrian explosion-that stunning burst of diversification in life forms on Earth-the abstraction of group theory opened windows into an infinity of truths. Fields as far apart as the laws of nature and music suddenly became mysteriously connected. The Tower of Babel of symmetries miraculously fused into a single language.

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About Mario Livio

Mario Livio (born June 19, 1945) is an astrophysicist and an author of works that popularize science and mathematics. For 24 years (1991–2015) he was an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope. He has published more than 400 scientific articles on topics including cosmology, supernova explosions, black holes, extrasolar planets, and the emergence of life in the universe.[1] His book on the irrational number phi, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002), won the Peano Prize and the International Pythagoras Prize for popular books on mathematics.