Living proof: Hunting through higher dimensions with Zhouli Xu

<p>On May 30th 2024 seminar goers at Princeton University witnessed a thrilling moment. The mathematician <a href='https://sites.google.com/view/xuzhouli'>Zhouli Xu</a> of the University of California, LA, announced that, together with colleagues he had sorted out the 126th dimension. Not in general, but in regards to a problem that has taunted mathematicians since the 1960s. The problem involves strange shapes and is called the Kervaire invariant problem, after the mathematician Michel Kervaire.</p> <p>In this episode of Maths on the Move Zhouli takes us on a trip into higher dimensions, giving us a gist of what this long-standing problem is all about and retracing some of the long, and sometimes arduous, journey towards a proof. We met Zhouli when he visited our neighbours at the <a href='https://newton.ac.uk/'>Isaac Newton institute for Mathematical Sciences</a> (INI) in Cambridge to take part in a research programme called <a href='https://www.newton.ac.uk/event/eht/'>Equivariant h...