Math
The Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges
Even with no one in charge, army ants work collectively to build bridges out of their bodies. New research reveals the simple rules that lead to such complex group behavior.
You’re Descended from Royalty and So Is Everybody Else
Anybody you can name from ancient history is in your family tree.
Mathematicians Crack the Cursed Curve
A famously difficult mathematical problem resisted solution for over 40 years. Mathematicians have finally resolved it by following an intuition that links number theory to physics.
How to Teach Science with Sugar and Cream
High school teachers are bringing ice cream into the lab.
Visionary Mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky Dies at 51
Voevodsky’s friends remember him as constitutionally unable to compromise on the truth—a quality that led him to produce some of the most important mathematics of the 20th century.
The Math That Promises to Make the World Brighter
The color of LED lights is controlled by a clumsy process. A new mathematical discovery may make it easier for us to get the hues we want.
Why Mathematicians Like to Classify Things
It’s “a definitive study for all time, like writing the final book,” says one researcher who’s mapping out new classes of geometric structures.
Claude Shannon, the Las Vegas Shark
The father of information theory built a machine to game roulette, then abandoned it.
Marjorie Rice’s Secret Pentagons
A California housewife who in the 1970s discovered four new types of tessellating pentagons is dead at 94.
