MATHEMATICS: Taking the Measure of the Wildest Dance on Earth

Science. 2000 Dec 8;290(5498):1883-4. doi: 10.1126/science.290.5498.1883.

Abstract

By exploiting the symmetry of randomness, three mathematicians have revealed the geometric underpinnings of the frenetic random dance called Brownian motion. The methods they used seem likely to apply to other random processes, some as familiar as the flow of water through a filter. The proof was presented at the recent Current Developments in Mathematics 2000 conference sponsored by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.