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The NASA Engineer Who’s a Mathematician at Heart
Christine Darden worked at NASA for 40 years, helping make supersonic planes quieter and forging a path for women to follow in her footsteps.
Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem
Long considered solved, David Hilbert’s question about seventh-degree polynomials is leading researchers to a new web of mathematical connections.
The Crooked Geometry of Round Trips
Imagine if we lived on a cube-shaped Earth. How would you find the shortest path around the world?
New Quantum Algorithms Finally Crack Nonlinear Equations
Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.
How I Learned to Love and Fear the Riemann Hypothesis
A number theorist recalls his first encounter with the Riemann hypothesis and breaks down the math in a new Quanta video.
Our Favorite Comments of the Year
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.
The Year in Math and Computer Science
Even as mathematicians and computer scientists proved big results in computational complexity, number theory and geometry, computers proved themselves increasingly indispensable in mathematics.
A Mathematician’s Unanticipated Journey Through the Physical World
Lauren Williams has charted an adventurous mathematical career out of the pieces of a fundamental object called the positive Grassmannian.
How the Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math’s Fundamental Limits
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.