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Mathematics

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A Master of Numbers and Shapes Who Is Rewriting Arithmetic

August 1, 2018

The 30-year-old math sensation Peter Scholze is now one of the youngest Fields medalists for “the revolution that he launched in arithmetic geometry.”

An Innovator Who Brings Order to an Infinitude of Equations

August 1, 2018

The mathematician Caucher Birkar was born on a subsistence farm and raised in the middle of the brutal war between Iran and Iraq. After fleeing to England, he has gone on to impose order on a wild landscape of mathematical equations.

A Traveler Who Finds Stability in the Natural World

August 1, 2018

The mathematician Alessio Figalli is rarely in one place for very long. But his work has established the stability of everything from crystals to weather fronts by using concepts derived from Napoleonic fortifications.

Major Quantum Computing Advance Made Obsolete by Teenager

July 31, 2018

18-year-old Ewin Tang has proven that classical computers can solve the “recommendation problem” nearly as fast as quantum computers. The result eliminates one of the best examples of quantum speedup.

Solution: ‘The Slippery Math of Causation’

June 29, 2018

The all-too-intuitive picture of a straight arrow going from cause to effect is far too simplistic to describe the real world.

Mathematicians Tame Turbulence in Flattened Fluids

June 27, 2018

By squeezing fluids into flat sheets, researchers can get a handle on the strange ways that turbulence feeds energy into a system instead of eating it away.

Mathematics Shows How to Ensure Evolution

June 26, 2018

New results emerging from graph theory prove that the way a population is organized can guarantee the eventual triumph of natural selection — or permanently thwart it.

Q&A

Her Key to Modeling Brains: Ignore the Right Details

June 19, 2018

Being able to think like a physicist helps Carina Curto, a mathematician-turned-neuroscientist, pull insights about the human brain out of theoretical models.

Four Is Not Enough

June 18, 2018

How many colors do you need to color an infinite plane so that no points 1 unit apart are the same color?

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