Mathematics

The quest to solve cubic equations led to duels, betrayals — and modern mathematics.

Artificial intelligence has bested humans at problem-solving challenges like chess and Go. Is mathematics research next? Steven Strogatz speaks with mathematician Kevin Buzzard to learn about the effort to translate math into language that computers understand.

In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and elaborate logic and teach the fundamentals of generalization.

A new proof identifies precisely how large a mathematical graph must be before it contains a regular substructure.

For decades mathematicians have searched for a specific pair of surfaces that can’t be transformed into each other in four-dimensional space. Now they’ve found them.

Jared Duker Lichtman, 26, has proved a longstanding conjecture relating prime numbers to a broad class of “primitive” sets. To his adviser, it came as a “complete shock.”

Using ideas borrowed from graph theory, two mathematicians have shown that extremely complex surfaces are easy to traverse.

The Langlands program provides a beautifully intricate set of connections between various areas of mathematics, pointing the way toward novel solutions for old problems.

Four puzzle solutions reveal different ways to divine someone’s hidden number with impossibly little information.