Q&A

Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle.

The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to learn from it.

Alex Sushkov is updating an old technology with new quantum tricks in hopes of sensing the magnetic influence of dark matter.

The computer scientist Ellie Pavlick is translating philosophical concepts such as “meaning” into concrete, testable ideas.

The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch.

Russell Impagliazzo studies hard problems, the limits of cryptography, the nature of randomness and more.

The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought.

The pathbreaking geneticist Cassandra Extavour pursues the secrets of multicellular life while balancing careers in both science and singing.

The astrophysicist Erin Kara measures time lags in black holes’ X-ray glows, which reveal the complexity of the objects’ closest surroundings.