Number theory, the study of the properties of positive integers, is perhaps the purest form of mathematics. At first sight, it may seem far too abstract to apply to the natural world. In fact, the ...

After the star-studded mystery thriller The Number 23 debuted in cinemas in 2007, many people became convinced that they were seeing the eponymous number everywhere. I was in school at that time, and ...

Oxford University’s James A. Maynard was awarded the prestigious Carrier Medal for his groundbreaking work in number theory.

On his way to winning a Fields Medal, James Maynard has cut a path through simple-sounding questions about prime numbers that have stumped mathematicians for centuries. Number theorists, however, ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last ...

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. Zero is a weird number. Well, ...

“Many people don't realize that there are math questions that we don't know how to answer,” says mathematician Melanie Matchett Wood of Harvard University and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced ...