Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2016
The fact that an abelian group can be associated with an irreducible cubic curve has been known for a long time, and many results of great beauty are known about such groups. Ever since Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, some of these results have become well known even outside the mathematical world.
It may come as a surprise to the reader that there is a natural way to associate an abelian group with a much better known and simpler class of curves – the conic sections! In this article we explore some properties of these groups.