What's up in
Mathematics
Latest Articles
Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility
The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation.
The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy
Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics.
Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign?
Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction.
Surprise Computer Science Proof Stuns Mathematicians
For decades, mathematicians have been inching forward on a problem about which sets contain evenly spaced patterns of three numbers. Last month, two computer scientists blew past all of those results.
Coloring by Numbers Reveals Arithmetic Patterns in Fractions
In a recent paper, two mathematicians showed that a particular pattern is unavoidable when fractions are categorized.
New Proof Distinguishes Mysterious and Powerful ‘Modular Forms’
Using “refreshingly old” tools, mathematicians resolved a 50-year-old conjecture about how to categorize important functions called modular forms, with consequences for number theory and theoretical physics.
How Many Exoplanets Can You Visit in Quanta’s New Math Game?
Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new interactive math game, Hyperjumps!
An Applied Mathematician With an Unexpected Toolbox
Lek-Heng Lim uses tools from algebra, geometry and topology to answer questions in machine learning.
Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle
Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside.