The ancient scholar Hippasus of Metapontum was punished with death for his discovery of irrational numbers—or at least that’s the legend. What actually happened in the fifth century B.C.E. is far from ...

A long-standing puzzle seems to constrain how addition and multiplication relate to each other. A graduate student has gone further than anyone else in establishing the connection. In 1983 the ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

A prime number is a number that is only divisible by one and itself, which is essentially saying that it has no divisor. That takes half of all possible numbers off the table right away (the evens), ...