Report to the
Joint Mathematics Meetings
“What was the lecture about,
Cosmo wanted to know.
‘It’s about solving equations
of the fifth degree,
which are supposed to be insoluble.'”
— Chapter 2 of
The Shadow Guests,
by Joan Aiken
For more material on insolubility
of fifth-degree equations
and on this winter’s
Joint Mathematics Meetings
(Phoenix, Jan. 7-10), see
the January 6 entry
720 in the Book.
For more material on Joan Aiken,
who died on January 4,
see the previous entry.
The number 720 is the order of
the symmetric group of degree 6.
For material related to
exceptional outer automorphisms
of this group and to
a song about Arizona, see
“Shinin’ like a diamond
she had tombstones
in her eyes.”
