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How Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics
...were his actual mathematical contributions? What Albert Einstein was to 20th-century physics, Alexander Grothendieck was to 20th-century mathematics. He is much less well known because math gets technical even more...
Strange Numbers Found in Particle Collisions
...collision will play out as sketched. “In some sense Feynman invented this diagram to encode complicated math as a bookkeeping device,” said Sergei Gukov, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at...
Rediet Abebe on Using Algorithms for Social Justice
...letters from some of the world’s top mathematicians saying what a tremendous talent she was in abstract math. And curiously — and for me very exciting — she wanted to...
Robbert Dijkgraaf on Exploring Quantum Reality
...call it quantum mathematics in physics. But I think it’s also very important movement just within pure math itself. [MUSIC PLAYING] Strogatz: When he speaks of quantum mathematics, he means...
The Man Who Stole Infinity
Long-Lost Letters Reveal the Lies That Gave Rise To Modern Math In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A...
Game Theory Calls Cooperation Into Question
...strategies were selfish ones that led to extortion, not cooperation. Plotkin found the duo’s math remarkable in its elegance. But the outcome troubled him. Nature includes numerous examples of cooperative...
A Design Dilemma Solved, Minus Designs
...the exception, mathematicians wondered, or the rule? “It was one of the most famous problems in combinatorics,” said Gil Kalai, a mathematician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He recalls...
Solution: ‘The Slippery Eel of Probability’
...satisfy a given condition divided by the total number of all configurations. This abstract approach is what gives mathematics its power and generality. But it’s also responsible for math’s reputation...
A Tricky Path to Quantum-Safe Encryption
...this looming threat, cryptographers have been racing to develop “quantum-resistant” schemes efficient enough for widespread use. The most promising schemes are believed to be those based on the mathematics of...