From the Editor
In 1611 Johannes Kepler published a conjecture on the tightest way to pack unit spheres in 3-D. In April 2000, Thomas Hales described his proof here in the Notices. Our cover story reports that last year Maryna Viazovska proved the 8-D case, promptly followed by a collaborative proof in 24-D. Meanwhile, as described in our second feature article, Stanley's Partitionability Conjecture has been disproved by a counterexample. The Graduate Student Section features an interview with Tom Grandine, senior technical fellow at Boeing Company, and "WHAT IS...Benford's Law?" A new Mathematical Moment on "Maintaining a Balance" vs. global environmental catastrophe has an accompanying deeper explanation by MIT climate scientist Daniel Rothman. This issue also includes an article on active learning, a report on The Bridges Conference—the world's largest interdisciplinary conference on mathematics and art, a new BookShelf, a book review examining recreational math, and a firsthand account of a Fulbright Specialist's time in Qatar. The BackPage has a special comic on refereeing and the Super Bowl. —Frank Morgan, Editor-in-Chief
Feature Articles
A Conceptual Breakthrough in Sphere Packing
Henry Cohn
The Partitionability Conjecture
Art M. Duval, Caroline J. Klivans and Jeremy L. Martin
WHAT IS...Benford’s Law?
Arno Berger and Ted Hill
Communications
Mathematical Expression of a Global Environmental Catastrophe
Daniel H. Rothman
Report on Bridges 2016—In Memory of Our Founder, Reza Sarhangi (1952–2016)
Carlo H. Séquin
What Does Active Learning Mean For Mathematicians?
Benjamin Braun, Priscilla Bremser, Art M. Duval, Elise Lockwood and Diana White
From the AMS Secretary
Graduate Students
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Volume 64 · Issue 02
Mathematics in Poland after the War, by Henry Helson
After military service during World War II, Henry Helson (1927-2010) returned to his studies at Harvard. Although his father's recent ancestors had left Eastern Europe to escape pogroms, Henry Helson was determined to cross the Atlantic and do what he could to help with Europe's reconstruction. This article describes his trip, what he learned and observed of the postwar society, and the mathematical life he encountered in Poland.
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