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 ...

Physicists construct theories to describe nature. Let us explain it through an analogy with something that we can do in our everyday life, like going on a hike in the mountains. To avoid getting lost, ...

Mathematicians were disturbed, centuries ago, to find that calculating the properties of certain curves demanded the seemingly impossible: numbers that, when multiplied by themselves, turn negative.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 2003, a German graduate student named Britta Späth encountered the McKay conjecture, one of the biggest open problems in the ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. - A U.S. Army-funded researcher who developed a mathematical theory for complex systems such as networks, power grids and the human brain, has received a prestigious ...