The Riemann hypothesis is the most important open question in number theory—if not all of mathematics. It has occupied experts for more than 160 years. And the problem appeared both in mathematician ...

A new study has found that a chick’s ability to mentally organize numbers along a line from left to right is not learned but is instead a direct result of brain specialization that occurs before ...

In the study by Rugani et al., chicks were tasked to locate food hidden behind the fourth bottle cap in a vertical row of 10 identical caps. Lateralisation of the brain – the tendency for the left and ...

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, ...

Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others, to distinguish numbers ...

Thousands of computers across the world are currently scouring the number line in a scavenger hunt for rare mathematical gems. Enthusiasts looking for larger and larger prime numbers, which are ...

Lateralization of the brain – the tendency for the left and right hemispheres to specialize in different functions – underlies the development of a left-to-right mental number line, according to a ...