Archive

The spate of furious wildfires around the world during the past decade has revealed to ecologists how much biodiversity and “pyrodiversity” go hand in hand.

The solution to our puzzle about Euler’s number explains why e pops up in situations that involve optimality.

By carefully constructing a multidimensional and well-connected graph, a team of researchers has finally created a long-sought locally testable code that can immediately betray whether it’s been corrupted.

A mathematical model shows how a thermodynamic mechanism could have made protocells split in two.

Through his encyclopedic study of the electron, an obscure figure named Stefano Laporta found a handle on the subatomic world’s fearsome complexity. His algorithm has swept the field.

The Chinese remainder theorem is an ancient and powerful extension of the simple math of least common multiples.

Ana Caraiani seeks to unify mathematics through her work on the ambitious Langlands program.

Quantum bits are fussy and fragile. Useful quantum computers will need to use an error-correction technique like the one that was recently demonstrated on a real machine.

Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.