Equipartitions of measures in

A well-known problem of B. Grünbaum (1960) asks whether for every continuous mass distribution (measure) on there exist hyperplanes dividing into parts of equal measure. It is known that the answer is positive in dimension (see H. Hadwiger (1966)) and negative for (see D. Avis (1984) and E. Ramos (1996)). We give a partial solution to Grünbaum's problem in the critical dimension by proving that each measure in admits an equipartition by hyperplanes, provided that it is symmetric with respect to a -dimensional affine subspace of . Moreover we show, by computing the complete obstruction in the relevant group of normal bordisms, that without the symmetry condition, a naturally associated topological problem has a negative solution. The computation is based on Koschorke's exact singularity sequence (1981) and the remarkable properties of the essentially unique, balanced binary Gray code in dimension ; see G. C. Tootill (1956) and D. E. Knuth (2001).