Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Feb 3, 2022

Mathematician cracks 150-year-old chess problem

A chess problem that has stumped mathematicians for more than 150 years has finally been cracked. The n-queens problem began as a much simpler puzzle, and was first posed in an 1848 issue of the German chess newspaper Schachzeitung by the chess composer Max Bezzel. It asked how many ways...

Mar 8, 2022

What is pi?

Pi is a number that relates a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is an irrational number, which means that it is a real number that cannot be expressed by a simple fraction. That's because pi is what mathematicians call an infinite decimal — after the decimal point, the digits...

Mar 23, 2022

Pythagoras: Life, work and achievements

Born in Samos in around 570 B.C, Pythagoras is commonly said to be the first pure mathematician who proposed that everything is a number. Although he is most famous for his mathematical theorem, Pythagoras also made extraordinary developments in astronomy and geometry. He also developed a theory of music while...

Mar 24, 2022

Dennis Sullivan, mathematician who united chaos theory and geometric spaces, wins prestigious Abel Prize

American mathematician Dennis Sullivan has been awarded the 2022 Abel Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in math, for his contributions to the fields of topology and dynamical systems. According to a statement from The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (DNVA), which distributes the award each year along...

Jul 28, 2022

The World's Most Beautiful Equations

Introduction Equations aren't just useful' they're often beautiful. (Image credit: Shutterstock/Fedorov Oleksiy)Mathematical equations aren't just useful — many are quite beautiful. And many scientists admit they are often fond of particular formulas not just for their function, but for their form, and the simple, poetic truths they contain. While certain...

Jul 28, 2022

9 equations that changed the world

Mathematical equations offer unique windows into the world. They make sense of reality and help us see things that haven't been previously noticed. So it’s no surprise that new developments in math have often gone hand in hand with advancements in our understanding of the universe. Here, we take a...

Sep 22, 2022

Babylonians used Pythagorean theorem 1,000 years before it was 'invented' in ancient Greece

A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has revealed that the ancient Babylonians understood the Pythagorean theorem more than 1,000 years before the birth of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who is widely associated with the idea. The tablet, known as Si.427, was used by ancient land surveyors to draw accurate boundaries and is...

Mar 13, 2023

12 numbers that are cooler than pi

Here at Live Science, we love numbers. And on Pi Day — March 14, or 3/14 — we love to celebrate the world's most famous irrational number, pi, whose first 10 digits are 3.141592653. As the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, pi is not just irrational, meaning...

Mar 28, 2023

Mathematicians make rare breakthrough on notoriously tricky 'Ramsey number' problem

Mathematicians have made a breakthrough in one of the thorniest math problems out there — only the third major step forward in 75 years. The problem involves Ramsey numbers, a deceptively simple concept that is quite slippery, mathematically. A Ramsey number is the minimum size of a group needed to...

Mar 31, 2023

High school students may have just discovered an 'impossible' proof to the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem

Two high school students say they’ve proved the Pythagorean theorem using trigonometry — a feat mathematicians thought was impossible. While the proof still needs to be scrutinized by mathematicians, it would constitute an impressive finding if true. Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson, who are seniors at St. Mary's Academy in...

Mar 31, 2023

Newly discovered 'einstein' tile is a 13-sided shape that solves a decades-old math problem

Look carefully! Mathematicians have invented a new 13-sided shape that can be tiled infinitely without ever repeating a pattern. They call it the einstein. For decades, mathematicians wondered if it was possible to find a single special shape that could perfectly tile a surface, without leaving any gaps or causing...

Jun 6, 2023

Mathematicians end decades-long quest to find elusive 'vampire einstein' shape

What has 14 sides, is full of curves, and can perfectly cover a surface with no gaps or overlaps? It's not a riddle — it's a vampire einstein. In March, a retired printing technician named David Smith stumbled upon a remarkable discovery in the world of mathematics. He found a...

Jun 15, 2023

A 79-year-old mathematician may have just solved an infinite dimension puzzle that's vexed theorists for decades

Two weeks ago, a modest-looking paper was uploaded to the arXiv preprint server with the unassuming title On the invariant subspace problem in Hilbert spaces. The paper is just 13 pages long and its list of references contains only a single entry. The paper purports to contain the final piece...

Jul 11, 2023

Mathematicians finally identify 'seemingly impossible' number after 32 years, thanks to supercomputers

Mathematicians armed with supercomputers have finally identified the value of a hefty number that was previously thought to be impossible to calculate. The number, known as the ninth Dedekind number or D(9), is actually the 10th in a sequence. Each Dedekind number represents the number of possible configurations of a...

Aug 11, 2023

Scientists uncover hidden math that governs genetic mutations

Scientists have discovered that a key function from a pure branch of mathematics can predict how often genetic mutations lead to changes in function. These rules, laid out by the so-called sum-of-digits function, also govern some aspects of protein folding, computer coding and certain magnetic states in physics. Part of...