Latest Articles
Prime Gap Grows After Decades-Long Lull
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
Subhash Khot’s bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.