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The Mathematician Who Finds the Poetry in Math and the Math in Poetry

January 12, 2024

The links between math, music and art have been explored for thousands of years. Sarah Hart is now turning a mathematical eye to literature.

Q&A

The ‘Accidental Activist’ Who Changed the Face of Mathematics

January 3, 2024

Throughout her 60-year career, Lenore Blum has developed new perspectives on logic and computation while championing women in mathematics and computer science. Now consciousness is on her mind.

Q&A

She Studies How Addiction Hijacks Learning in the Brain

December 7, 2023

Erin Calipari works to understand how drugs like opioids and cocaine alter learning circuits and neurochemistry in one of the country's epicenters of substance use disorder and addiction.

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The Scientist Who Decodes the Songs of Undersea Volcanoes

November 8, 2023

In the rumbles and groans of underwater volcanoes, Jackie Caplan-Auerbach finds her favorite harmonies — and clues to the Earth’s interior.

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The Computing Pioneer Helping AI See

October 24, 2023

Alexei Efros has spent his career learning how machines see differently from humans. Now he’s helping to bridge the gap.

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The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise

September 20, 2023

To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light — Cynthia Chiang builds her own equipment. Then she deploys it at the ends of the Earth.

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Why Mathematical Proof Is a Social Compact

August 31, 2023

Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach.

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Andreas Wagner Pursues the Secrets to Evolutionary Success

August 15, 2023

Why did mammals, grasses and some other groups of organisms explode in diversity only after millions of years? The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner plumbs the secrets of those “sleeping beauties.”

Q&A

The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers

July 27, 2023

Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future.

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