Most of us first hear about the irrational number π (pi)—rounded off as 3.14, with an infinite number of decimal digits—in school, where we learn about its use in the context of a circle. More ...

The premise of Marcus du Sautoy’s Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity is that mathematics and creativitiy spring from the same well — structure. Individual numbers exist without human help.

Mathematical truths are often born of the conflict between order and disorder. Mathematicians discover patterns, and, to better understand the mysterious forces at play, they look for countervailing ...

How can the behavior of elementary particles and the structure of the entire universe be described using the same mathematical concepts? This question is at the heart of the recent work by ...