Archive

Our bodies are a genetic patchwork, possessing variation from cell to cell. Is that a good thing?

Physicists have begun to explore the idea that mass and length may not be fundamental properties of nature. The hypothesis could help to avoid the conclusion that our world is just a weird bubble in an endlessly foaming multiverse.

Subhash Khot’s bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.

Martin Hairer was named a 2014 Fields medalist for an epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis that colleagues say “created a whole world.”

Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman Fields medalist for drawing deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems, has died of cancer at the age of 40. This is our 2014 profile of her life and work.

Artur Avila’s solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have “changed the face of the field,” earning him Brazil’s first Fields Medal.

The search for artistic truth and beauty has led Manjul Bhargava to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory, which have helped earn him the Fields Medal.

Despite swapping DNA through interbreeding, butterflies and other animals can maintain distinct species.

Bacteria may have helped single-celled organisms make the leap to multicellular animals.