Column
- Physics
John Wheeler (1911-2008)
SN Editor in Chief Tom Siegfried remembers the late physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole" in 1967, with excerpts from conversations the two had engaged in over the past two decades.
- Math
Sensitivity to the harmony of things
The work of Alexandre Grothendieck has transformed math the way the Internet has transformed communication: Once you’re used to it, you can’t imagine what life was like before it.
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- Math
Still debating with Plato
Mathematicians debate whether mathematical truths are discovered or invented.
- Science & Society
Science Education and the Future of Humankind
Nobel Prize–winning physicist Leon Lederman warns that science education is crucial for humankind’s future. Lederman is director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
- Math
The Noisy Game of Baseball
Predicting a baseball player's future batting average (and many other things) is not as simple as relying on past performance, mathematicians say.
- Math
Creeping Up on Riemann
Theorists find the first example of an elusive complex function that just may help them solve the biggest problem in mathematics.
- Math
Humanitarian Statistics
From Iraq to Sierra Leone to New Orleans, statistical tools help guide responses to human rights crises.
- Math
Sacred Geometry
Beginning in the 17th century, the Japanese adorned temples with beautiful wooden tablets that depicted mathematical questions and theorems, apparently as offerings to the gods.
- Math
Spoil-Proofing Elections
The only way to ensure that the person the voters prefer walks away the winner, mathematicians say, is to fundamentally change voting procedures.
- Math
The Geometry of Music
Music is an audible exploration of hyperdimensional geometries, according to new research.
- Math
A Mathematical Tragedy
Sophie Germain had a bold program to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, but it was doomed to fail.
