Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 27, 2018

This Biologist Cracked a Problem That's Stumped Mathematicians for 68 Years

An amateur mathematician just partially solved a problem that has vexed mathematicians since 1950. Aubrey de Grey — a biologist better known for trying to radically extend human life and for predicting that the first person to live to be 1,000 years old has already been born — has published...

Aug 2, 2018

This Man Won the Top Prize in Mathematics — Then Someone Immediately Stole It

Yesterday (Aug. 1), University of Cambridge mathematician Caucher Birkar won the Fields Medal — the highest prize in mathematics, awarded every four years to a small group of mathematicians age 40 or younger. The award came with a 14-carat gold medal and 15,000 Canadian dollars (about $11,500). According to the...

Sep 25, 2018

Mathematician Claims He Solved 160-Year-Old Math Problem. Critics Say Probably Not.

An unsolved 160-year-old math problem may finally have a solution — but critics are wary. Michael Atiyah, a prominent mathematician emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, announced yesterday (Sept. 24) at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany that he had come up with a simple proof to solve the Riemann...

Jan 19, 2019

How a German City Developed — And Then Lost — Generations of Math Geniuses

There are two things that connect the names Gauss, Riemann, Hilbert and Noether. One is their outstanding breadth of contributions to the field of mathematics. The other is that each was a professor at the same university in Göttingen, Germany. Although relatively unknown today, Göttingen, a small German university town,...

Mar 22, 2019

Karen Uhlenbeck Just Won One of Math's Most Prestigious Prizes. Here's Why Her Work Is So Important.

U.S. mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck won this year’s Abel Prize, becoming the first woman to take home the prestigious math award, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters announced March 19. Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin and currently a visiting scholar at Princeton University, won...

Apr 2, 2019

A Mathematician Just Solved a Deceptively Simple Puzzle That Has Boggled Minds for 64 Years

A mathematician in England has cracked a math puzzle that's stumped computers and humans alike for 64 years: How can the number 33 be expressed as the sum of three cubed numbers? While it might seem simple on its face, this question is part of an enduring number-theory conundrum that...

Apr 4, 2019

Computer Software Could Crack Centuries-Old Math Puzzle

In mathematics, no researcher works in true isolation. Even those who work alone use the theorems and methods of their colleagues and predecessors to develop new ideas. But when a known technique is too difficult to use in practice, mathematicians may neglect important — and otherwise solvable — problems. Recently,...

May 28, 2019

Mathematicians Edge Closer to Solving a 'Million Dollar' Math Problem

Did a team of mathematicians just take a big step toward answering a 160-year-old, million-dollar question in mathematics? Maybe. The crew did solve a number of other, smaller questions in a field called number theory. And in doing so, they have reopened an old avenue that might eventually lead to...

Jul 31, 2019

This Mathematician's 'Mysterious' New Method Just Solved a 30-Year-Old Problem

A mathematician has solved a 30-year-old problem at the boundary between mathematics and computer science. He used an innovative, elegant proof that has his colleagues marveling at its simplicity. Hao Huang, an assistant professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, proved a mathematical idea called the sensitivity conjecture, which,...

Sep 5, 2019

Mathematician Wins $3 Million Breakthrough Prize for 'Magic Wand Theorem'

Alex Eskin, a mathematician at the University of Chicago, has won the $3 million 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded in 2013 by a group of tech billionaires (as well as multihundred millionaire Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of genomics and biotech company 23andMe). The prizes...

Sep 17, 2019

Long-Standing Problem of 'Golden Ratio' and Other Irrational Numbers Solved with 'Magical Simplicity'

Most people rarely deal with irrational numbers—it would be, well, irrational, as they run on forever, and representing them accurately requires an infinite amount of space. But irrational constants such as π and √2—numbers that cannot be reduced to a simple fraction—frequently crop up in science and engineering. These unwieldy...

Oct 5, 2019

Can You Count Past Infinity?

To infinity and beyond! Have you even thought deeply about Buzz Lightyear's famous catchphrase from the Toy Story movies? Probably not. But maybe you've sometimes looked up at the night sky and wondered about the nature of infinity itself. Infinity is a weird concept, one that the human brain has...

Oct 29, 2019

Mathematicians Solve 'Twin Prime Conjecture' — In an Alternate Universe

Mathematicians have uncovered a big new piece of evidence for one of the most famous unproven ideas in mathematics, known as the twin prime conjecture. But the route they took to finding that evidence probably won't help prove the twin prime conjecture itself. The twin prime conjecture is all about...

Nov 4, 2019

Maryam Mirzakhani Won Math's Most Prestigious Medal Before She Died. Now There's a Prize in Her Honor.

A new prize was just founded to honor the late Maryam Mirzakhani, a brilliant Iranian mathematician who died of breast cancer in 2017. The $50,000 prize will go to outstanding young female mathematicians who are no more than two years out from earning their doctoral degrees. We hope that the...

Nov 25, 2019

Phi: The Golden Ratio

The number phi, often known as the golden ratio, is a mathematical concept that people have known about since the time of the ancient Greeks. It is an irrational number like pi and e, meaning that its terms go on forever after the decimal point without repeating. Over the centuries,...