141. The Language of the Universe

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 (math.virginia.edu/people/ko5wk), professor of mathematics and STEM adviser to the provost at the University of Virginia.

• RESOURCES:• "‘Digital Twins’ Give Olympic Swimmers a Boost (scientificamerican.com/article/training-with-d…)," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (Scientific American, 2024).
• "Swimming in Data (link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-024-1…)," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2024).
• "Integer Partitions Detect the Primes (pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409417121)," by William Craig, Jan-Willem van Ittersum, and Ken Ono (PNAS, 2024).
• The Man Who Knew Infinity (imdb.com/title/tt0787524), film by Matt Brown (2015).
• "Proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture (link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40687-015-0…)," by John F. R. Duncan, Michael J. Griffin, and Ken Ono (Research in the Mathematical Sciences, 2015).
• "Ramanujan's Ternary Quadratic Form (uva.theopenscholar.com/files/ken-ono/files/025…)," by Ken Ono and K. Soundararajan (Inventiones Mathematicae, 1997).

• EXTRA:• "Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos (freakonomics.com/podcast/richard-dawkins-on-go…)," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).

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