The concept of dimension seems simple enough, but mathematicians struggled for centuries to precisely define and understand it.

Legend says the Chinese military once used a mathematical ruse to conceal its troop numbers. The technique relates to many deep areas of modern math research.

Deep in the mantle, a branching plume of intensely hot material appears to be the engine powering vast volcanic activity.

The molecular signaling systems of complex cells are nothing like simple electronic circuits. The logic governing their operation is riotously complex — but it has advantages.

A painstaking study of wing morphology shows both the striking uniformity of individuals in a species and a subtle pattern of linked variations that evolution can exploit.

The n-queens problem is about finding how many different ways queens can be placed on a chessboard so that none attack each other. A mathematician has now all but solved it.

Researchers have discovered that environments favoring clumpy growth are all that’s needed to quickly transform single-celled yeast into complex multicellular organisms.

Solutions to the simplest polynomial equations — called “roots of unity” — have an elegant structure that mathematicians still use to study some of math’s greatest open questions.

The unexpected discovery of the double-charm tetraquark has given physicists a new tool with which to hone their understanding of the strongest of nature’s fundamental forces.

As topologists seek to classify shapes, the effort hinges on how to define a manifold and what it means for two of them to be equivalent.

So-called topological quantum computing would avoid many of the problems that stand in the way of full-scale quantum computers. But high-profile missteps have led some experts to question whether the…

How does consciousness arise in mere flesh and blood? To the neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies are the key to the experience.

David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian receive the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of how we detect heat and touch.

Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann have been honored for their work that led to reliable predictions of the effects of climate change. They will share the Nobel with Giorgio Parisi…

Benjamin List and David MacMillan received the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of asymmetrical organocatalysis.

After decades of effort, mathematicians now have a complete understanding of the complicated equations that model the motion of free boundaries, like the one between ice and water.

To help them explain the shocking success of deep neural networks, researchers are turning to older but better-understood models of machine learning.

After the ultra-powerful James Webb Space Telescope launches later this year, Laura Kreidberg will lead two efforts to check the weather on rocky planets orbiting other stars.

Built upon the ubiquitous Fourier transform, the mathematical tools known as wavelets allow unprecedented analysis and understanding of continuous signals.

When animals move through 3D spaces, the neat system of grid cell activity they use for navigating on flat surfaces gets more disorderly. That has implications for some ideas about memory and other…

A new model of learning centers on bursts of neural activity that act as teaching signals — approximating backpropagation, the algorithm behind learning in AI.