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An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe
Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational problems.
A Century Later, New Math Smooths Out General Relativity
Mathematicians prove a theorem that illuminates the geometry of universes with tiny amounts of mass.
Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof
How Fermat’s less famous "little theorem" got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers.
The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences
Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians.
In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere
High-dimensional spheres can have a much wider variety of structures than mathematicians thought possible.
The Hidden Connection That Changed Number Theory
Quadratic reciprocity lurks around many corners in mathematics. By proving it, number theorists reimagined their whole field.
A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling
The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries.
A New Generation of Mathematicians Pushes Prime Number Barriers
New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.
The Mathematician Who Sculpted the Shape of Space
Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became fundamental to string theory.