Some mathematical statements feel undeniably true the moment you hear them. Yet proving them can be impossible. This theorem has convinced generations of mathematicians without ever yielding a formal ...

In 1931, the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel pulled off arguably one of the most stunning intellectual achievements in history. Mathematicians of the era sought a solid foundation for mathematics: a set ...

Computers are extremely good with numbers, but they haven’t gotten many human mathematicians fired. Until recently, they could barely hold their own in high school-level math competitions. But now ...

When I tell someone I am a mathematician, one of the most curious common reactions is: “I really liked math class because everything was either right or wrong. There is no ambiguity or doubt.” I ...

When I was in grad school at St. Bonaventure studying to become a school district leader, one of my professors told the class that math teachers make the best school administrators because of their ...

Lashi Bandara is affiliated with Australian National University. These are questions I’m often confronted with when people discover I do pure mathematics. I always manage to provide an answer but it ...

Images of plants painted on pottery made up to 8,000 years ago may be the earliest example of humans’ mathematical thought, a study has found.

Randomness would seem to make a mathematical statement harder to prove. In fact, it often does the opposite. Of all the tools available to the mathematician, randomness would seem to offer little ...