Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

Several years ago one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...

The Royal Irish Academy, the academy for the sciences and humanities for the whole of Ireland will vigorously promote excellence in scholarship, recognise achievements in learning, direct research ...

In 1886 the mathematician Leopold Kronecker famously said, “God Himself made the whole numbers — everything else is the work of men.” Indeed, mathematicians have introduced new sets of numbers besides ...

What is the most bizarre real number that you can imagine? Probably many people think of an irrational number such as pi (π) or Euler’s number. And indeed, such values can be considered “wild.” After ...