You are looking for
Advanced search
The Prime Rib Problem
...of $1 million from the Clay Mathematics Institute, and which some physicists are attacking using quantum mechanics. Primes invoke in mathematicians a deep sense of awe and continue to inspire...
New Shapes Solve Infinite Pool-Table Problem
...related Abstractions post: Why Mathematicians Like to Classify Things “They are like these rare jewels,” said Curt McMullen, a mathematician at Harvard University and a co-author of the work along...
Solution: ‘Why Are There Two Sexes?’
The mathematical concept of parity and the fatal flaw of serial multiplication can help explain why having two sexes usually works better than having one or three. Our July Insights...
The Beautiful Mathematical Explorations of Maryam Mirzakhani
...as “unrelatable and incomprehensible,” given that they were “math challenged.” However, Maryam was the opposite of unrelatable. She reminded us, in words and actions, that mathematical ideas can be understood...
Kaisa Matomäki Dreams of Primes
...attend a boarding school that specialized in math instruction, and as a senior she won first prize in a national mathematics competition. When she began serious mathematical research as a...
The Illuminating Geometry of Viruses
...inactivated viruses. Twarock’s mathematical work also has applications beyond viruses. Govind Menon, a mathematician at Brown University, is exploring self-assembling micro- and nanotechnologies. “The mathematical literature on synthetic self-assembly is...
Marjorie Rice’s Secret Pentagons
...column in Scientific American about tiling, a problem that has fascinated mathematicians since ancient Greek times. The problem, as Martin Gardner explained in the column, asks which shapes “tile” the...
Pentagon Tiling Proof Solves Century-Old Math Problem
A French mathematician has completed the classification of all convex pentagons, and therefore all convex polygons, that tile the plane. One of the oldest problems in geometry asks which shapes...
How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation
...what is the right way to represent this problem mathematically?” It’s always a combination of the data, these discussions, and the math on the board that leads us to a...