Erica Klarreich

Contributing Correspondent

Latest Articles

Prime Gap Grows After Decades-Long Lull

December 10, 2014

A year after tackling how close together prime number pairs can stay, mathematicians have now made the first major advance in 76 years in understanding how far apart primes can be.

A Grand Vision for the Impossible

August 12, 2014

Subhash Khot’s bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.

A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces

August 12, 2014

Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman Fields medalist for drawing deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems, has died of cancer at the age of 40. This is our 2014 profile of her life and work.

A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos

August 12, 2014

Artur Avila’s solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have “changed the face of the field,” earning him Brazil’s first Fields Medal.

The Musical, Magical Number Theorist

August 12, 2014

The search for artistic truth and beauty has led Manjul Bhargava to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory, which have helped earn him the Fields Medal.

A Fluid New Path in Grand Math Challenge

February 24, 2014

A daring speculation offers a potential way forward in one of the great unsolved problems of mathematics: the behavior of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow.

Perfecting the Art of Sensible Nonsense

January 30, 2014

In a watershed moment for cryptography, computer scientists have proposed a solution to a fundamental problem called “program obfuscation.”

Together and Alone, Closing the Prime Gap

November 19, 2013

Working on the centuries-old twin primes conjecture, two solitary researchers and a massive collaboration have made enormous advances over the last six months.

The Proof in the Quantum Pudding

August 21, 2013

How do you know if a quantum computer is doing what it claims? A new protocol offers a possible solution and a boost to quantum cryptography.

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