Sphere packers of the world unite

Three years ago, Maryna Viazovska, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, dazzled mathematicians by identifying the densest way to pack equal-sized spheres in eight- and 24-dimensional space (the second of these in collaboration with four co-authors). Now, she and her co-authors have proved something even more remarkable: The configurations that solve the sphere-packing problem in those two dimensions also solve an infinite number of other problems about the best arrangement for points that are trying to avoid each other.

Far back, sphere packing rules the world.  It started with Shannon, I think, he considered encoding a sphere packing problem.  The folks doing atomic orbitals often considered it a sphere packing problem.

So, Meryna, we love you, thinks for the brilliant work.