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90 After the Bible, Euclid's Elements was probably the most influential book of all time. For over 2,000 years, the keenest minds of Western civilization have marveled at the elegance of its basic geometry. We all have wrestled with Euclid's theorems, the value of and its relationship with a circle, the degrees in a triangle, etc. On June 10, 1854, the most important lecture in the history of mathematics was given at the University of Gottingen, Germany. Georg Bernhard Riemann was the son of a Lutheran pastor, an intense Bible student, and had been mentored by Carl Friedrich Gauss, the "prince of mathematics." In one masterfulstroke Riemann uncovered the mathematical foundation of geometries of higher dimensional space and thus opened the door to modern physics. Riemann recognized that "forces" were a consequence of a distortion of geometry and presented his metric tensors as a technique of dealing with at oo them. Progress in our physical understanding of the universe has been dramatic in many respects, but has remained segmented into fragments which have eluded being synthesized into a composite whole. There are four basic forces in nature, and they account for all the dynamics observed throughout our physical universe. They are gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the "strong" and "weak" nuclear forces. Gravity causes an apple to fall to the ground, keeps our feet on the floor, and binds our solar system together. It keeps Earth and the planets in their orbits, prevents the stars from exploding, and guides the galaxies in their motions. The electromagnetic force holds the atom together and determines the structure of the orbits of the electrons. Thus it governs the laws of chemistry and molecular formations. Its various forms include x-rays, radio waves, and light. The electromagnetic force can also overcome gravity on Earth and reduce the other forces to about the size of the nucleus of the atom. That's where two other forces take over. The "strong" nuclear force binds together the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom. The balance between the strong force and electromagnetic force limit a nucleus to 57 BEYOND EUCLID THE SEARCH FOR PHYSICAL REALITY