Speaker: Henry Cohn, Microsoft Research and MIT
The exact solution to the sphere packing problem is known in only five cases: 1, 2, 3, 8, and 24 dimensions. What's so special about 8 and 24 dimensions? Why not, for example, 16? Or 4? That question remains somewhat mysterious. In this talk, we'll take a look at how sphere packing works, and we'll examine the proof techniques behind 8 and 24 dimensions.
