It was hailed as a revolutionary mathematics curriculum that prioritized the concept of a set over the concept of a number. 'New math' was introduced to millions of US schoolchildren in the 1960s. Yet ...

On a recent train trip from Lyon to Paris, Vladimir Voevodsky sat next to Steve Awodey and tried to convince him to change the way he does mathematics. Voevodsky, 48, is a permanent faculty member at ...

For centuries, the concept of infinity has captivated mathematicians and philosophers alike, stretching far beyond the simple idea of endless counting. Recent groundbreaking discoveries, however, have ...

The equal sign is the bedrock of mathematics. It seems to make an entirely fundamental and uncontroversial statement: These things are exactly the same. But there is ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...

Isaac Asimov excelled at predicting the future. In one of his early science fiction stories, he introduced pocket calculators decades before you could buy them at Radio Shack. In a later book, he ...

Let’s start with what’s probably the most tired, overused joke in math: A topologist is someone who can’t tell a coffee cup from a doughnut. Both, you see, have a hole in them. Topology is usually ...

Let the physical basis of a social economy be given— or, to take a broader view of the matter, of a society. According to all tradition and experience human beings have a characteristic way of ...