Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Fermat’s last theorem is just one of many examples of innocent-looking problems that can long stymie even the most astute mathematicians. It took about 350 years to prove Fermat’s scribbled conjecture ...

Innocent-looking problems involving whole numbers can stymie even the most astute mathematicians. As in the case of Fermats last theorem, centuries of effort may go into proving such tantalizing, ...

A paper posted online in January takes theoretical computer scientists halfway toward proving one of the biggest conjectures in their field. The new study, when combined with three other recent papers ...