Million dollar math
My first feature was a piece about unsolved problems in mathematics, published in Discover in 2006. Read it here.
Year: 2011
The Perfect Way to Slice a Pizza
Unsolved problems make for good stories. In this case, a couple of mathematicians cracked the little-known "Pizza Conjecture," a rigorous…
Whatever Happened to… Smallpox?
Once the most feared disease on the planet, smallpox killed countless people in the course of human history. The first signs…
The Proof is in the Blogging
In 2006, shortly after Grigory Perelman famously refused the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, a mathematician…
Turning Water into Whiskey at Jack Daniel’s
Some would argue that the water flowing from a fissure in a rock in Moore County, Tennessee, is made for…
Whatever Happened To… Subliminal Advertising?
In 1957, marketing executive James Vicary claimed that during screenings of the film Picnic, the words “eat popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola”…
Wallpaper for a Hyperbolic World
Frank Farris is a mathematician who has some wild ideas about wallpapering your hyperbolic house. I wrote about him for…
Whatever Happened To… Mind Control?
In the 1950s, visitors to a brothel atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill got more than just a tryst and a view…
8 Ways Scientists Look at—But Don’t Yet See—Dark Matter
The hunt for dark matter is on, and scientists are looking for the mysterious stuff on Earth and in space.…
A Shaking Star Soon Shares Its Secrets
Just as earthquakes help scientists learn about the interior of our planet, the way a star’s surface oscillates yields clues…