The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last ...
After the star-studded mystery thriller The Number 23 debuted in cinemas in 2007, many people became convinced that they were seeing the eponymous number everywhere. I was in school at that time, and ...
A new breakthrough that bridges number theory and geometry is just the latest triumph for a close-knit group of mathematicians. One of the first collaborations Xinyi Yuan and Wei Zhang ever undertook ...