The collective electrical activity of many neurons can be seen as waves propagating through the brain from one region to the ...

The late Ronald Graham wore two hats. He was a renowned mathematician, at one time president of the American Mathematical Society. He was also a serious juggler, and president of the International ...

The biggest breakthrough in modern theoretical physics is the discovery that gravity can collapse the dimensions of space.

Two decades ago, scientists seemed on the verge of understanding biology in a new, quantum way. Life unfolds over an incomprehensible span of scales, from our planet-enveloping biosphere at one end, ...

Half of our genome is made of transposons — snips of DNA that can move and copy themselves. But they’re more than parasites ...

In 2004, two mathematicians hypothesized a powerful kind of sandwich. They were studying graphs, which are collections of points (called vertices) and lines (called edges). Graphs might represent ...

For thousands and sometimes millions of years, marine plankton all over the world built their spiral shells in one direction. Then, suddenly, the spirals switched direction at the same time, ...

Some math problems continue to haunt researchers long after they’ve been solved. A proof emerges, is even celebrated, and yet dissatisfaction lingers. Perhaps the argument is too convoluted — the hunt ...

Hidden correspondences hint at a deeper structure to the mathematical universe. Our columnist unpacks one of those connections and asks mathematicians what they might mean. The mathematical universe ...