Fermat’s last theorem is just one of many examples of innocent-looking problems that can long stymie even the most astute mathematicians. It took about 350 years to prove Fermat’s scribbled conjecture ...

If pure math can teach us anything, it’s this: occasionally, your special interest might just change the world. For Joshua Zahl and Hong Wang, that special interest was the Kakeya conjecture. “I read ...

The artificial intelligence (AI) program DeepMind has gotten closer to proving a math conjecture that's bedeviled mathematicians for decades and revealed another new conjecture that may unravel how ...

Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall. Summer Haag and Clyde ...

The Collatz Conjecture is a deceptively simple math problem. It has only two rules. First, pick any number. If it's even, divide it by two. If it's odd, multiply it by three and add one. This will ...

Despite multiple conferences dedicated to explicating Mochizuki’s proof, number theorists have struggled to come to grips with its underlying ideas. His series of papers, which total more than 500 ...

A pair of mathematicians has solved the first chunk of one of the most famous conjectures about the additive properties of whole numbers. Proposed more than 60 years ago by the legendary Hungarian ...

After over three decades, five academic studies and one thousand pages, a team led by Yale Professor Sam Raskin has solved a part of what some consider math’s “Rosetta Stone.” Raskin led a nine-person ...