History of science

C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his visionary ideas.

The theoretical side of the field doesn’t require computing machines. But many questions would never have been posed without them.

To explore quantum phenomena, we must leave the familiar world and enter the abstract realm of Hilbert space.

In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivated the nation. Columnist Claire L. Evans follows the neuroscientists who attempted to recapture the magic.

Over hundreds of years, increasingly sophisticated instruments have revealed — and continue to reveal — the secrets of our star.

By replacing the most fundamental concept in topology, Peter Scholze and Dustin Clausen are taking the first step in a far bigger program to understand why numbers behave the way they do.

Grothendieck is revered in the world of math; outside of it, he’s known for his unusual life, if he’s known at all. But what were his actual mathematical contributions?

The quest to make mathematics rigorous has a long and spotty history — one mathematicians can learn from as they push to formalize everything in the computer program Lean.

David E. Dunning explores how mathematical notation is a social, world-building technology.