How Tadayuki Watanabe Disproved a Major Conjecture About Spheres | Quanta Magazine

In a burst of work, mathematicians have moved closer to understanding just how many ways there are of contorting a simple sphere so that, in the end, it still resembles itself. Much of the progress comes from results by Tadayuki Watanabe at Kyoto University. Over the last several years, he has figured out how to adapt a powerful technique for the broader purpose of studying spheres of any number o