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Mathematics

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Photo of Darden sitting on her couch and smiling
Q&A

The NASA Engineer Who’s a Mathematician at Heart

By Susan D'Agostino
January 19, 2021
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Christine Darden worked at NASA for 40 years, helping make supersonic planes quieter and forging a path for women to follow in her footsteps.

Illustration of mathematicians descending through a cavern whose walls are lined with polynomials.
polynomials

Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem

By Stephen Ornes
January 14, 2021
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Long considered solved, David Hilbert’s question about seventh-degree polynomials is leading researchers to a new web of mathematical connections.

Quantized Academy

The Crooked Geometry of Round Trips

By Patrick Honner
January 13, 2021
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Imagine if we lived on a cube-shaped Earth. How would you find the shortest path around the world?

An animation showing chaotic swirls of purple coalesce into a single line
Abstractions blog

New Quantum Algorithms Finally Crack Nonlinear Equations

By Max G. Levy
January 5, 2021
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Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.

number theory

How I Learned to Love and Fear the Riemann Hypothesis

By Alex Kontorovich
January 4, 2021
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A number theorist recalls his first encounter with the Riemann hypothesis and breaks down the math in a new Quanta video.

2020 in Review

Our Favorite Comments of the Year

By Thomas Lin
December 23, 2020
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Online comment platforms can bring out the best — and the worst — in people. At the end of a tumultuous year, Quanta’s editors highlight some of our favorite things you had to say.

2020 in Review

The Year in Math and Computer Science

By Bill Andrews
December 23, 2020
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Even as mathematicians and computer scientists proved big results in computational complexity, number theory and geometry, computers proved themselves increasingly indispensable in mathematics.

Mathematician Lauren Williams standing in front of a whiteboard that has mathematics written on it.
combinatorics

A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World

By Kevin Hartnett
December 16, 2020
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Lauren Williams has charted an adventurous mathematical career out of the pieces of a fundamental object called the positive Grassmannian.

Abstractions blog

How the Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math’s Fundamental Limits

By John Pavlus
December 10, 2020
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The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics.


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