Quantized Columns

The theoretical physicist Joe Polchinski, who died February 2, left a tremendous professional and personal legacy, says a friend and collaborator.

Simple math shows how widespread vaccination can disrupt the exponential spread of disease and prevent epidemics.

For decades, physicists have struggled to create a quantum theory of gravity. Now an approach that dates to the 1970s is attracting newfound attention.

Triangles fit effortlessly together, as do squares. When it comes to pentagons, what gives?

To discover our species’ deep history and to shape its future health, we should learn from the microbes that accompanied us on our evolutionary journey.

If you didn't get a flu shot, you are endangering more than just your own health. Calculations of herd immunity against common diseases don't make exceptions.

Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.

Every exquisite drawing by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the founder of modern neuroscience, is marred by a curious mark. Here is the little-known story behind it.

Reductionism breaks the world into elementary building blocks. Emergence finds the simple laws that arise out of complexity. These two complementary ways of viewing the universe come together in modern theories of quantum gravity.