141. The Language of the Universe

People I (Mostly) Admire

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).