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Mathematics
Abel Prize
Dennis Sullivan, Uniter of Topology and Chaos, Wins the Abel Prize
The American mathematician invented entire new ways to understand shapes and spaces.
number theory
Math’s ‘Oldest Problem Ever’ Gets a New Answer
A new proof significantly strengthens a decades-old result about the ubiquity of ways to represent whole numbers as sums of unit fractions.
machine learning
In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win
A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory.
Quantized Columns
How We Can Make Sense of Chaos
Dynamical systems can be chaotic and impossible to predict, but mathematicians have discovered tools to help understand them.
Insights puzzle
Play First and Lose: Zugzwang in Chess, Math and Pizzas
How to win games by going second and leaving your opponent with no good options.
machine learning
Machine Learning Becomes a Mathematical Collaborator
Two recent collaborations between mathematicians and DeepMind demonstrate the potential of machine learning to help researchers generate new mathematical conjectures.
artificial intelligence
Computer Scientists Prove Why Bigger Neural Networks Do Better
Two researchers show that for neural networks to be able to remember better, they need far more parameters than previously thought.
geometry
An Ancient Geometry Problem Falls to New Mathematical Techniques
Three mathematicians show, for the first time, how to form a square with the same area as a circle by cutting them into interchangeable pieces that can be visualized.
number theory
Mathematicians Prove 30-Year-Old André-Oort Conjecture
A team of mathematicians has solved an important question about how solutions to polynomial equations relate to sophisticated geometric objects called Shimura varieties.