Mathematics

Wordle is a word game. But you can use math to optimize your chances of winning (without cheating).

The work — the first-ever limit on how many whole numbers can be written as the sum of two cubed fractions — makes significant headway on “a recurring embarrassment for number theorists.”

Inspired by the results of a game-playing neural network, mathematicians have been making unexpected advances on an age-old math problem.

Wei Ho, the first director of the Women and Mathematics program at the Institute for Advanced Study, combines algebra and geometry in her work on an ancient class of curves.

Proving that two polygons have the same area can be as easy as cutting them up and rearranging the pieces.

For more than 250 years, mathematicians have wondered if the Euler equations might sometimes fail to describe a fluid’s flow. A new computer-assisted proof marks a major breakthrough in that quest.

Lattice cryptography promises to protect secrets from the attacks of far-future quantum computers.

Svetlana Jitomirskaya was born in Ukraine, but left the Soviet Union to escape sexism and antisemitism. Even though her work in mathematical physics has now been honored with one of the field’s top prizes, she finds herself still fighting old battles.

Far from being an abstract mathematical curiosity, knot theory has driven many findings in math and beyond.