For every popular list of unsolved problems, there are scholars and students dreaming of -- and working towards -- solving the puzzles they contain. Many search for creative solutions, only to reach ...

In 2004, the Clay Mathematics Institute picked seven outstanding problems in mathematics, physics, and computer science, whose solution would win its solver a prize of $1 million. Since the offering ...

A pendulum in motion can either swing from side to side or turn in a continuous circle. The point at which it goes from one type of motion to the other is called the separatrix, and this can be ...

In one of David Lodge's comic novels about academia, the English-professor characters play a game called "Humiliation," where they take turns admitting classic works of literature that they haven't ...

This article is the first part of a series about quantum field theory published by Quanta Magazine. Other stories in the series can be found here. Over the past century, quantum field theory has ...

In 1655 the English mathematician John Wallis published a book in which he derived a formula for pi as the product of an infinite series of ratios. Now researchers from the University of Rochester, in ...