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Decade-long struggle over maths proof could be decided by $1m prize

11 July 2023

Mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki's Inter-universal Teichmüller theory has attracted controversy since it was published in 2012, with no one able to agree whether it is true. Now, a $1 million prize is being launched to settle the matter

Ancient plant's leaves didn't follow golden rule as modern ones do

15 June 2023

Most modern plants grow leaves in a pattern that follows the Fibonacci sequence, but a reconstruction of a 400-million-year-old plant reveals that its leaves grew much more chaotically

A larger version of the banner image above, crossfading between Tile(1,1) and a Spectre with curved edges.

Mathematicians make even better never-repeating tile discovery

30 May 2023

An unsatisfying caveat in a mathematical breakthrough discovery of a single tile shape that can cover a surface without ever creating a repeating pattern has been eradicated. The newly discovered "spectre" shape can cover a surface without repeating...

Mathematician wins Abel prize for solving equations with geometry

22 March 2023

Luis Caffarelli has been awarded the most prestigious prize in mathematics for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations, which have many applications in the real world

Breakthrough in fiendishly hard puzzle has mathematicians partying

21 March 2023

Calculating Ramsey numbers is so difficult that one mathematician once said he'd rather fight off an alien invasion. Now, mathematicians have made the first major advance in nearly a century

Mathematicians discover shape that can tile a wall and never repeat

21 March 2023

Aperiodic tiling, in which shapes can fit together to create infinite patterns that never repeat, has fascinated mathematicians for decades, but until now no one knew if it could be done with just one shape

Quantum computers may finally have their first real practical use

18 March 2023

Methods to generate the random numbers we need for secure communications are all flawed in some way, but quantum computers that exist today could produce random numbers that can't be faked

Mathematical trick lets hackers shame people into fixing software bugs

17 January 2023

Security researchers who find a flaw in software normally privately inform the developers of it in the hope of prompting a fix, but now a mathematical trick can let them apply public pressure without releasing dangerous details of the bug