Years ago, an audacious Fields medalist outlined a sweeping program that, he claimed, could be used to resolve a major ...

Large language models such as ChatGPT come with filters to keep certain info from getting out. A new mathematical argument ...

The reason we can gracefully glide on an ice-skating rink or clumsily slip on an icy sidewalk is that the surface of ice is ...

Is language core to thought, or a separate process? For 15 years, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko has gathered evidence of a ...

By combining the language of groups with that of geometry and linear algebra, Marius Sophus Lie created one of math’s most ...

Researchers have used metamathematical techniques to show that certain theorems that look superficially distinct are in fact ...

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules.

Joseph Howlett is a math writer for Quanta Magazine. His articles have been published Scientific American, The San Francisco Chronicle and Gizmodo, among other places. He has a Ph.D.

Sitting outside a Catholic church on the French Riviera, Carlo Rovelli jutted his head forward and backward, imitating a pigeon trotting by. Pigeons bob their heads, he told me, not only to stabilize ...

Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture. The ...

Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, ...

Imagine that someone gives you a list of five numbers: 1, 6, 21, 107 and — wait for it — 47,176,870. Can you guess what comes next? If you’re stumped, you’re not alone. These are the first five busy ...