A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...

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The world belongs to the mathematicians and the physicists. We lay people may pump our minds with Discovery Channel specials, but they’re the ones who get to understand how it all really works–how the ...

On April 17, a paper arrived in the inbox of Annals of Mathematics, one of the discipline’s preeminent journals. Written by a mathematician virtually unknown to the experts in his field — a ...

On May 13, an obscure mathematician — one whose talents had gone so unrecognized that he had worked at a Subway restaurant to make ends meet — garnered worldwide attention and accolades from the ...

While I was looking for a gift for a child’s birthday, a math book fell into my hands. I am always fascinated when authors write about abstract scientific topics for children, whether it’s on Albert ...

A supercomputer has something for the record books. A computer has found the largest known prime number. It's 22 million digits long. Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search — -- Here's one for the ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Jon Pace, a longtime FedEx employee, has loved math since high ...

An exciting breakthrough by an academic little known before last year is firing up mathematicians. Now even playwrights are getting in on the act. Leslie Katz led a team that explored the intersection ...

Digitally delicate prime numbers become composite with this one weird trick. Math researchers proved these primes exist using the bucket proof method. There are no known examples so far, but ...