The moment of discovery: Ken Ono

Ken Ono, Math Whiz

If you can stand to read a story about mathematics, there's an inspirational one on physorg.com about an amazing mathematician from Emory. His name is Ken Ono and the rather long article discusses his discovery and describes the moment when he came up with the idea. It's a good story, especially the description of when and how he came up with his brilliant notion. Here's a link to the story.

The story demonstrates something I've discussed here (and in my books): that important patterns are all around us but we're too dumb to see them. Ono found one. These secrets are hiding in plain sight but we have no clue. We'll see the patterns one day if we last long enough. And who can say how we'll benefit from the discoveries? They're in a realm we don't even know exists.

In case you don't want to read the article, let me say that before Ono's theory surfaced, the only way to solve the problem of "partition numbers" was so time-consuming as to be almost useless (and often involved infinities, never a good sign). But on a walk one day with a colleague, Ono (and the colleague) figured out a simple way to provide instant answers to a problem that has confounded the greatest mathematical minds.

Ono saw the pattern everyone else missed. He is a genius. I think what we'll learn from as yet undiscovered patterns will change everything. Life as we know it is the "before" picture. But "after" certain patterns become evident, doors will be flung open -- doors we never knew existed. And because these laws, these patterns are completely unknown to us, we can't begin to predict what will be on the other side.

We are an infant race with so much ahead of us. People don't cherish the future anymore and that's why they don't protect the present. That is so sad and short-sighted. We must protect the present if our descendants are to thrive after we're gone. Why don't people care about this? To me, that's the greatest mystery.