• Corpus ID: 123564506

The modern study of knots grew out an attempt by three 19th-century Scottish physicists to apply knot theory to fundamental questions about the universe

@inproceedings{Silver2016TheMS,
  title={The modern study of knots grew out an attempt by three 19th-century Scottish physicists to apply knot theory to fundamental questions about the universe},
  author={Daniel S. Silver},
  year={2016}
}

• D. Silver
• Published 2016
• Physics

T ake a length of rope, loop and weave it around itself and connect its ends. The result , of course, is a knot. Creating a knot seems simple, yet knot theory is one of the most active fields in mathematics today, yielding thousands of peer-reviewed articles over the past decade. There's even an academic journal devoted entirely to knot theory. One reason for its popularity is the conviction that knots have profound implications for fields other than mathematics. Already knot theory has been applied to subjects as diverse as quantum mechanics and genetics. But these are only the latest of a number of attempts to use knots to untangle some of science's mysteries. In fact, knot theory grew out of a bold (and wildly misguided) effort to develop an early " theory of everything. " Two 19th-century Scot-tish physicists, William Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait, believed that chemical elements were knotted tubes of ether, which, given the contemporary state of physics, might have explained the nature of atoms and how they acted. A third Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, famous for his work on electromag-netism, encouraged Thomson and Tait in the development of this " vortex-atom theory. " No solid evidence for Thomson's vortex-atom theory was ever found, and today it is long forgotten. But the attempt to apply knot theory to fundamental questions about science, the ultimate nature of matter and even the existence of an afterlife is an inspiring tale. Today, scientists are often accused of being excessively narrow in their research. This colorful triumvi-rate of Scottish physicists would have been free of any such charges. This is the story of a magnificent failure. Knot History The most fundamental question in knot theory is determining whether two knots are the same. Mathematicians usually regard knots as identical if one can be deformed—stretched or twisted, but never broken—so that it looks exactly like the other. It is relatively easy to prove that two knots are the same—simply deform one until it appears identical to the other—but showing that two knots are different is difficult because the possible contortions are infinite. Knot theory includes the study of links, which consist of any number of knots (called components) intertwined in any manner. A popular motif in ancient Rome, links were often added to mosaics adorning homes and temples. Celtic knot and link patterns, the best examples of which can be …