A revolution in knot theory
Thursday, November 10, 2011 - 04:30
in Physics & Chemistry
In the 19th century, Lord Kelvin made the inspired guess that elements are knots in the "ether". Hydrogen would be one kind of knot, oxygen a different kind of knot---and so forth throughout the periodic table of elements. This idea led Peter Guthrie Tait to prepare meticulous and quite beautiful tables of knots, in an effort to elucidate when two knots are truly different. From the point of view of physics, Kelvin and Tait were on the wrong track: the atomic viewpoint soon made the theory of ether obsolete. But from the mathematical viewpoint, a gold mine had been discovered: The branch of mathematics now known as "knot theory" has been burgeoning ever since.
