Latest Articles
One Man’s Mission to Unveil Math’s Beauty
Richard Rusczyk, founder of Art of Problem Solving, discusses how to bring out the joy, creativity and beauty in math.
The Biggest Project in Modern Mathematics
In a 1967 letter to the number theorist André Weil, a 30-year-old mathematician named Robert Langlands outlined striking conjectures that predicted a correspondence between two objects from completely different fields of math. The Langlands program was born. Today, it’s one of the most ambitious mathematical feats ever attempted. Its symmetries imply deep, powerful and beautiful connections between the most important branches of mathematics. Many mathematicians agree that it has the potential to solve some of math’s most intractable problems, eventually becoming a kind of “grand unified theory of mathematics.” In a new video explainer, Rutgers University mathematician Alex Kontorovich takes us on a journey through the continents of mathematics to learn about the awe-inspiring symmetries at the heart of the Langlands program.
Inside the Big Reveal of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
Astrophysicists and data scientists on the Event Horizon Telescope team give the backstory behind their new image of Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.
The Man Who Revolutionized Computer Science With Math
Leslie Lamport talks about the importance of programming instead of coding, how he developed distributed systems and his favorite algorithm.
A Polymath on Physics, Computer Science, Neuroscience and Literature
Vijay Balasubramanian discusses the connections he sees between physics, computer science, neuroscience and literature and the humanities.
Steven Strogatz’s Secrets of Math Communication
The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz joins Quanta editor Thomas Lin for a conversation about teaching, writing and podcasting.