Even though we’ve learned a lot about this relative of smallpox, some mysteries remain due to a lack of political will.

Readers rescued a Star Trek crew from a probabilistic predicament armed only with the power of mathematical reasoning.

Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studying our extinct ancestors’ DNA.

The quantum physicists Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 for their development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.

The decades-old Sullivan’s conjecture, about the best way to minimize the surface area of a bubble cluster, was thought to be out of reach for three bubbles and up — until a new breakthrough result.

Efforts to build a better digital “nose” suggest that our perception of scents reflects both the structure of aromatic molecules and the metabolic processes that make them.

Zero-knowledge proofs allow researchers to prove their knowledge without divulging the knowledge itself.

Letting human brain organoids grow in animal brains could be an ethical new option for experimental studies of neurological disorders.

With stem cell technology and lab-grown brain organoids, Sergiu Paşca seeks the causes of autism and other neuropsychiatric conditions.

In his senior year of high school, Daniel Larsen proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers — strange entities that mimic the primes. “It would be a paper that any mathematician would be really proud to have written,” said one mathematician.

Recent explorations of unique geometric worlds reveal perplexing patterns, including the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.

Harry Halpin wants our internet conversations to be more private. He’s helped create a new kind of network that might make it possible.

The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed. We’ve attempted to connect the proton’s many faces to form the most complete picture yet.

Physical-collapse theories have long offered a natural solution to the central mystery of the quantum world. But a series of increasingly precise experiments are making them untenable.

A team of physicists has entangled three photons over a considerable distance, which could lead to more powerful quantum cryptography.

Solve these puzzle questions to level up your Wordle game.

A recent gamma-ray burst known as the BOAT — “brightest of all time” — appears to have produced a high-energy particle that shouldn’t exist. For some, dark matter provides the explanation.

The discovery of a hot spot for horizontal gene transfer draws attention to the possible roles of parasites and ecology in such changes.

Far from being an abstract mathematical curiosity, knot theory has driven many findings in math and beyond.

Svetlana Jitomirskaya was born in Ukraine, but left the Soviet Union to escape sexism and antisemitism. Even though her work in mathematical physics has now been honored with one of the field’s top prizes, she finds herself still fighting old battles.