Emory mathematician Ken Ono helped make sense of a long-standing mystery. | Emory University
Last summer, Ken Ono of Emory University became a minor mathematical celebrity when he, along with collaborators Michael Griffin and Ole Warnaar, discovered four infinite families of identities — mathematical formulas involving variables (like x or y) that are true regardless of the values of those variables. (For example, (a * b)x = ax * bx..) The new identities are generalizations of two specific ones first found by the great mathematicians Leonard Rogers and Srinivasa Ramanujan in the early 1900s. The finding is a milestone in mathematics.
