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Scientists Conjure Curves From Flatness
Researchers have found a set of rules for imbuing flat surfaces with curvature, enabling them to form a virtually unlimited range of three-dimensional structures.
Prime Gap Grows After Decades-Long Lull
A year after tackling how close together prime number pairs can stay, mathematicians have now made the first major advance in 76 years in understanding how far apart primes can be.
A Common Logic to Seeing Cats and Cosmos
New research suggests physicists, computers and brains employ the same procedure to tease out important features from among other irrelevant bits of data.
At the Far Ends of a New Universal Law
A potent theory has emerged explaining a mysterious statistical law that arises throughout physics and mathematics.
A Grand Vision for the Impossible
Subhash Khot’s bold conjecture is helping mathematicians explore the precise limits of computation.
In Noisy Equations, One Who Heard Music
Martin Hairer was named a 2014 Fields medalist for an epic masterpiece in stochastic analysis that colleagues say “created a whole world.”
A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces
Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman Fields medalist for drawing deep connections between topology, geometry and dynamical systems, has died of cancer at the age of 40. This is our 2014 profile of her life and work.
A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos
Artur Avila’s solutions to ubiquitous problems in chaos theory have “changed the face of the field,” earning him Brazil’s first Fields Medal.
The Musical, Magical Number Theorist
The search for artistic truth and beauty has led Manjul Bhargava to some of the most profound recent discoveries in number theory, which have helped earn him the Fields Medal.