An exciting breakthrough by an academic little known before last year is firing up mathematicians. Now even playwrights are getting in on the act. Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1917, the Japanese mathematician Sōichi Kakeya posed what at first seemed like nothing more than a fun exercise in geometry. Lay an ...

Sam Raskin in a still from the video “The Geometric Langlands Conjecture”. Credit: Institute for Advanced Study / Youtube Sam Raskin, a mathematician and professor at Yale University, has achieved a ...

A simple, step-by-step breakdown of two “perfect” math proofs. But which prime number is p? It must be on our list of primes, because our list is complete. But it also can’t be on our list of primes, ...

The Langlands program has inspired and befuddled mathematicians for more than 50 years. A major advance has now opened up new worlds for them to explore One of the biggest stories in science has been ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? A 125-page proof posted to arXiv may represent a huge breakthrough in geometric ...

What makes a proof stronger than a guess? What does evidence look like in the realm of mathematical abstraction? Hear the mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood explain how probability helps to guide ...

A Japanese mathematician claims to have solved one of the most important problems in his field. The trouble is, hardly anyone can work out whether he's right Sometime on the morning of August 30 2012, ...