In May 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that the tech entrepreneur and former Trump adviser Elon Musk solved an "unsolvable" math problem after a Harvard professor called him "rich but dumb.

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? Representation theory transforms abstract algebra groups into things like simpler ...

It's not as famous as Fermat's Last Theorem. In fact, the math problem, which has not had a correct solution since it was proposed in the 1960s, doesn't even have a name. But a new, elegant solution ...

In 2019, mathematicians finally solved a math puzzle that had stumped them for decades. It’s called a Diophantine Equation, and it’s sometimes known as the “summing of three cubes”: Find x, y, and z ...

It’s not that anyone ever said sophisticated math problems can’t be solved by teenagers who haven’t finished high school. But the odds of such a result would have seemed long. Yet a paper posted on ...

This article is part of an effort to resurface Globe readers’ most loved stories or timeless reports you might have missed. It was originally published on August 20, 2020. It was updated on April 10, ...