Tiles In Motion

Lawrence Weschler at Wondercabinet:

I won’t go into the history of the tiling problem here—Roberts does her typically clear, concise, and beguiling job in the article in question, well supplemented by an equally captivating account offered by longtime friend of the Cabinet, Margaret Wertheim, in a recent issue of her new substack Science Goddess, which you can find here. I love it that when it came to a breakthrough that had eluded the likes of the eminent Nobel laureate Roger Penrose (Stephen Hawking’s mentor!), who’d gotten stuck several years back one step shy of this ultimate solution, the fellow who turned out to make the decisive leap proved to be a modest, self-effacing cypher and complete nonprofessional outsider by the (near-perfectly anonymous) name of David Smith, who’d then had to seek out a small band of intrepid professionals to frame the discovery in terms a peer-reviewed journal would countenance (at first none of them could quite believe the development either). But that’s how it sometimes (even if almost never) happens. So do yourselves a favor and bone up on the particulars of this magical discovery on your own.

more here.