Like many of the cultures it studies, the Department of History of Mathematics has had innovative leaders, a golden era and, inevitably, a fall from glory. This year could witness the end of a ...

While American children once learned to add by reading a poster of animals and birds, they do it now by playing games on computers. Each step in between—whether it be a box of blocks or exercises ...

Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner once wrote that mathematics has the uncanny ability to describe the universe around us. That’s the spirit behind the new book “The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the ...

In 2014 Mura Yakerson, a college student at the time, decided to practice driving in a quiet area in the countryside near Saint Petersburg, Russia. Then something went wrong. While she was pulling out ...

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “the music of the spheres,” your first thought probably wasn’t about mathematics. But in its historical origin, the music of the spheres actually was all about math. In ...

A tablet that dates back some 3700 years has been found to be the oldest example of applied geometry in the history of mathematics. Australian mathematician Dr. Daniel Mansfield from UNSW Science's ...

March 14 — a day you’re more likely than most others to eat — or throw — a pie and get a reduced price on your pizza. It’s all in celebration of pi (Greek letter π), the mathematical constant and ...

The letter “x” often symbolizes something unknown, with an air of mystery that can be appealing. Illustration by Meilan Solly Even though “x” is one of the least-used letters in the English alphabet, ...