mathematics

In the fight against COVID-19, disease modelers have struggled against misunderstanding and misuse of their work. They have also come to realize how unready the state of modeling was for this pandemic.

The relationships among the properties of flexible shapes have fascinated mathematicians for centuries.

Christine Darden worked at NASA for 40 years, helping make supersonic planes quieter and forging a path for women to follow in her footsteps.

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

Imagine if we lived on a cube-shaped Earth. How would you find the shortest path around the world?

Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.

A number theorist recalls his first encounter with the Riemann hypothesis and breaks down the math in a new Quanta video.

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.

Even as mathematicians and computer scientists proved big results in computational complexity, number theory and geometry, computers proved themselves increasingly indispensable in mathematics.