Stories about math and mathematicians.
Erik-Jan Bos, a philosopher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, unearthed research gold with an Internet search. In putting together a critical edition of René Descartes’ correspondence, due out in 2014, he discovered a stolen, never-before-published letter from the seventeenth- century French philosopher and mathematician. In the run-up to Descartes’ 416th birthday on 31 March, […]
Descartes’ Decipherer Read More »
The largest proof in mathematics is colossal in every dimension – from the 100-plus people needed to crack it to its 15,000 pages of calculations. Now the man who helped complete a key missing piece of the proof has won a prize. In early November, Michael Aschbacher, an innovator in the abstract field of group theory
Prize awarded for largest mathematical proof Read More »
Mathematician Richard Hamilton was named a co-winner of the 2011 Shaw Prize for Mathematical Sciences. The honor comes with a $500K check. Hamilton is best known as the architect of the Ricci flow, a mathematical process that formed the foundation of Grisha Perelman’s 2006 proof of the Poincaré conjecture. Perelman turned down the Fields medal
Turning math into money Read More »
What’s the hardest straight-in shot in pool? Mathematician tries to find out in this article for New Scientist. This article is behind a paywall and I haven’t yet uploaded a pdf. Email me, and I’ll send you a copy.
My first feature was a piece about unsolved problems in mathematics, published in Discover in 2006. Read it here.
Million dollar math Read More »
Unsolved problems make for good stories. In this case, a couple of mathematicians cracked the little-known “Pizza Conjecture,” a rigorous attempt to understand how to share a pie. I wrote the story behind the solution for New Scientist in December 2009. Read it here.
The Perfect Way to Slice a Pizza Read More »
In 2006, shortly after Grigory Perelman famously refused the Fields Medal for his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, a mathematician from Lehigh University posted online a supposed proof of another unsolved math problem. Within days, mathematicians discovered a fatal flaw in her reasoning, but in the comment section at Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog,
The Proof is in the Blogging Read More »
Frank Farris is a mathematician who has some wild ideas about wallpapering your hyperbolic house. I wrote about him for New Scientist. If you subscribe to the magazine, you can read the story here. I hope to post a pdf of the story soon; in the meantime, feel free to email me for a copy.
Wallpaper for a Hyperbolic World Read More »
