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The Scientist Who Developed a New Way to Understand Communication
Mark Braverman has spent his career translating thorny problems into the language of information complexity.
A Solver of the Hardest Easy Problems About Prime Numbers
On his way to winning a Fields Medal, James Maynard has cut a path through simple-sounding questions about prime numbers that have stumped mathematicians for centuries.
For His Sporting Approach to Math, a Fields Medal
With Hugo Duminil-Copin, thinking rarely happens without moving. His insights into the flow-related properties of complex networks have earned him the Fields Medal.
He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He’s Won a Fields Medal.
June Huh wasn’t interested in mathematics until a chance encounter during his sixth year of college. Now his profound insights connecting combinatorics and geometry have led to math’s highest honor.
In Times of Scarcity, War and Peace, a Ukrainian Finds the Magic in Math
With her homeland mired in war, the sphere-packing number theorist Maryna Viazovska has become the second woman to win a Fields Medal in the award’s 86-year history.
Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth
A new origins-based system for classifying minerals reveals the huge geochemical imprint that life has left on Earth. It could help us identify other worlds with life too.
The Sordid Past of the Cubic Formula
The quest to solve cubic equations led to duels, betrayals — and modern mathematics.
Can Computers Be Mathematicians?
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.
Controversy Continues Over Whether Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold
Decades after a Tanzanian teenager initiated study of the “Mpemba effect,” the effort to confirm or refute it is leading physicists toward new theories about how substances relax to equilibrium.