Archive

By examining regions shared between some of nature’s most variable genes, malaria researchers are piecing together an understanding of a deadly parasite.

Complex natural systems defy analysis using a standard mathematical toolkit, so one ecologist is throwing out the equations.

Can you generate aesthetically pleasing, symmetrical curves with two numbers and a simple mathematical function?

Only a few genetic changes were enough to change an ordinary stomach bug into the bacteria responsible for the plague.

Using crowd-sourced and traditional mathematics research, Terence Tao has devised a solution to a long-standing problem posed by the legendary Paul Erdős.

A major advance in computational complexity reveals deep connections between the classes of problems that computers can — and can’t — possibly do.

The solution to this month’s puzzle uses both mathematics and psychology to explain trouble with choosing the fastest route.

Nima Arkani-Hamed is championing a campaign to build the world’s largest particle collider, even as he pursues a new vision of the laws of nature.

The biologist Nancy Moran has spent a career investigating the surprising nature of symbiosis, a phenomenon in which two species can appear to merge into one.