mathematics - Stephen Ornes

Math long resisted a digital disruption. AI is poised to change that

artificial intelligence, Features, Math stories / Stephen Ornes

Modern formalization, supercharged by AI, could radically change the way people do mathematics Mathematician Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London is training computers how to prove one of the most famous problems in math history: Fermat’s last theorem. Resolving the problem isn’t the point. There’s already an accepted proof that was finalized in 1998. That work

Math long resisted a digital disruption. AI is poised to change that Read More »

The New Math of Wrinkling

Features, Math stories / Stephen Ornes

A few minutes into a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan, Ian Tobasco picked up a large piece of paper and crumpled it into a seemingly disordered ball of chaos. He held it up for the audience to see, squeezed it for good measure, then spread it out again. “I get a wild mass of folds

The New Math of Wrinkling Read More »

Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem

Features, Math stories / Stephen Ornes

Success is rare in math. Just ask Benson Farb. “The hard part about math is that you’re failing 90% of the time, and you have to be the kind of person who can fail 90% of the time,” Farb once said at a dinner party. When another guest, also a mathematician, expressed amazement that he succeeded

Mathematicians Resurrect Hilbert’s 13th Problem Read More »

When Scientific American Made M. C. Escher Famous

Math stories, Recent Work / Stephen Ornes

Between 1957 and 1986 Martin Gardner wrote the Mathematical Games column for this magazine, with a total of 297 installments. During that time he became the world’s most prolific and best-known popularizer of recreational mathematics. His fans still revere him as a kind of sorcerer who conjured up an endless feast of puzzles, games and

When Scientific American Made M. C. Escher Famous Read More »

How Close Are Computers to Automating Mathematical Reasoning?

computer science, Features, Math stories, Tech / Stephen Ornes

In the 1970s, the late mathematician Paul Cohen, the only person to ever win a Fields Medal for work in mathematical logic, reportedly made a sweeping prediction that continues to excite and irritate mathematicians — that “at some unspecified future time, mathematicians would be replaced by computers.” Cohen, legendary for his daring methods in set theory, predicted

How Close Are Computers to Automating Mathematical Reasoning? Read More »

Your Hyperbolic Mind

Features, Math stories / Stephen Ornes

The human brain is both a marvel and a mystery of evolution: Packed into a volume about one-quarter that of an inflated soccer ball, somewhere around 86 billion neurons form networks that enable us to do everything from mindlessly scrolling through Instagram to safely sending people into space. But a deeper understanding of the structure of those

Your Hyperbolic Mind Read More »

Prizes, Thievery and Higher-Dimensional Doughnuts

Math stories, Recent Work / Stephen Ornes

And how mathematical collaborations yield breakthroughs. The biggest math heist in years happened the morning of Aug. 1 in a Rio de Janeiro auditorium packed with witnesses — none of whom saw it happen. The math world’s largest conference, the International Congress of Mathematicians, occurs every four years, and during the meeting, two to four

Prizes, Thievery and Higher-Dimensional Doughnuts Read More »