This generalization of geometry is bound to have wide spread repercussions for mathematics as well as physics. The unearthing of it will entail a new golden age in the interaction of mathematics and physics. E. Witten (1986) The idea that the moduli space Mg of curves of fixed genus 9 - that is, the algebraic variety that parametrizes all curves of genus 9 - is an intriguing object in its own right seems to have come slowly. Although the para meters or moduli of curves surface in Riemann's famous memoir on abelian functions (from 1857) and in work of Hurwitz and later were considered by the...