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Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof
How Fermat’s less famous "little theorem" got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers.
The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences
Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians.
Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better
The discovery that the brain has different systems for representing small and large numbers provokes new questions about memory, attention and mathematics.
In the ‘Wild West’ of Geometry, Mathematicians Redefine the Sphere
High-dimensional spheres can have a much wider variety of structures than mathematicians thought possible.
The Hidden Connection That Changed Number Theory
Quadratic reciprocity lurks around many corners in mathematics. By proving it, number theorists reimagined their whole field.
A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling
The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries.
A New Generation of Mathematicians Pushes Prime Number Barriers
New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.
The Mathematician Who Sculpted the Shape of Space
Eugenio Calabi, who died on September 25, conceived of novel geometric objects that later became fundamental to string theory.
Echoes of Electromagnetism Found in Number Theory
A new magnum opus posits the existence of a hidden mathematical link akin to the connection between electricity and magnetism.