For St. Emil’s Day
On this date in 1962, Emil Artin died.
He was, in his way, a priest of Apollo, god of music, light, and reason.
The previous entry dealt with permutation groups, in the context of a Jan. 2004 AMS Notices review of a book on the mathematics of juggling.
It turns out that juggling is, in fact, related to Artin’s theory of “braid groups.” For details, see Juggling Braids.
For more on Apollo, see my entry of
1/09.