A man playing snooker at a billiard club in Beijing on May 6, 2025. Zhao Xintong's historic victory at the World Snooker Championship is set to spur the game to even greater heights in China and ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. At the turn of the 20th century, the renowned mathematician David Hilbert had a grand ambition to bring a more rigorous, mathematical ...