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No one knows how to find the smallest shape that can cover all other shapes of a certain width. But high school geometry is getting us closer to an answer.
New work on the problem of “scissors congruence” explains when it’s possible to slice up one shape and reassemble it as another.
Two monumental works have led many mathematicians to avoid the equal sign. The process has not always gone smoothly.
Randomness would seem to make a mathematical statement harder to prove. In fact, it often does the opposite.
Mathematicians have proved that a random process applied to a random surface will yield consistent patterns.
Amie Wilkinson searches for exotic examples of the mathematical structures that describe change.
A little high school geometry can help you understand the basic math behind movie recommendation engines.
Mathematicians used “magic functions” to prove that two highly symmetric lattices solve a myriad of problems in eight- and 24-dimensional space.
A founder of modern geometric analysis who produced “some of the most dramatic advances in mathematics in the last 40 years,” Uhlenbeck is the first woman to be awarded this top honor.