Why do some melodies feel instantly right, balanced, memorable and satisfying, even if you have never heard them before? New research from the University of Waterloo suggests that more than creativity ...

A hundred years ago this week, at the height of the quantum revolution, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger submitted a manuscript for publication. Its centerpiece was an innocuous-looking equation ...

Occasionally, an article from the 1960s will resurface with the claim that mathematics once predicted the exact date of the world's end. This theme is the stuff of science fiction stories, but the ...

Ramanujan’s elegant formulas for calculating pi, developed more than a century ago, have unexpectedly resurfaced at the heart of modern physics. Researchers at IISc discovered that the same ...

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, ...

When a delicate object crashes onto the floor, most people expect it to shatter into several pieces. What they might not know, however, is that the sizes of those fragments—whether from a broken plate ...

IISc physicists discovered that Ramanujan’s classic π-formulas arise naturally in modern theories describing critical phenomena and black holes. The connection suggests his early mathematics may have ...

More than a hundred years ago, long before anyone imagined supercomputers or black hole simulations, legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan wrote down a set of formulas to calculate the ...

In Brookline, at the corner of Beacon and Washington Street, shiny SUVs pull up to a nondescript yellow building. Kids hurry out of the cars, and teachers usher them through the building’s glass doors ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. To the editor: The importance of math literacy cannot be overstated (“Math crisis began a decade ago and has only ...