The quest to make mathematics rigorous has a long and spotty history — one mathematicians can learn from as they push to ...

The basic shape that best describes our expanding universe is also the hardest shape for physicists to understand.

Dunning explores how mathematical notation is a social, world-building technology. It’s natural to think of math as being ...

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science.

Around the world, volcanologists are following the path of magma as it travels between connected volcanoes, in an effort that ...

Columnist Natalie Wolchover examines the latest developments in the “forever war” over whether string theory can describe the ...

Off the coast of Japan, biologists netted a pea-size jellyfish with an unusual circadian clock — a chance finding that ...

In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out to investigate the potential future of a planet on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. He started by looking some 600 ...

The most powerful formula in physics starts with a slender S, the symbol for a sort of sum known as an integral. Further along comes a second S, representing a quantity known as action. Together, ...

In October 2008, Chris Bretherton lifted off from the coast of northern Chile in a C-130 turboprop plane. It was too dark to see the sandy hills of the Atacama Desert below, but the darkness suited ...

In 1885, King Oscar II of Sweden announced a public challenge consisting of four mathematical problems. The French polymath Henri Poincaré focused on one related to the motion of celestial bodies, the ...

In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program. A group of nine mathematicians has proved the ...