Somewhere at the edge of mathematics lurks a number so large that it breaks the very foundations of our understanding - and ...

Mathematics is traditionally a solitary science. In 1986 Andrew Wiles withdrew to his study for seven years to prove Fermat’s theorem. The resulting proofs are often difficult for colleagues to ...

Mathematicians have long wondered how “shapes of constant width” behave in higher dimensions. A surprisingly simple construction has given them an answer. In 1986, after the space shuttle Challenger ...