Archive

In 1940 André Weil wrote a letter to his sister, Simone, outlining his vision for translating between three distinct areas of mathematics. Eighty years later, it still animates many of the most exciting developments in the field.

Why have bacteria never evolved complex multicellularity? A new hypothesis suggests that it could come down to how prokaryotic genomes respond to a small population size.

After years of false starts, a team of computer scientists has found a way to efficiently deduce the Hamiltonian of a physical system at any constant temperature.

Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional spheres.

The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface. The hidden culprit? Magnetic activity.

The computer scientist Ellie Pavlick is translating philosophical concepts such as “meaning” into concrete, testable ideas.

Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with molecular nutritionist Elizabeth Johnson about her research into the impact of human milk on a healthy microbiome.

More than 50 years after Bob Paine’s experiment with starfish, hundreds of species have been pronounced “keystones” in their ecosystems. Has the powerful metaphor lost its mathematical meaning?

Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe.