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 ...

Inside the symmetries of a crystal shape, a postdoctoral researcher has unearthed a counterexample to a basic conjecture about multiplicative inverses. “I’m nearly at the end of the talk, and it’s ...

Consider a pencil lying on your desk. Try to spin it around so that it points once in every direction, but make sure it sweeps over as little of the desk’s surface as possible. You might twirl the ...

Last week, Yitang “Tom” Zhang, a popular math professor at the University of New Hampshire, stunned the world of pure mathematics when he announced that he had proven the “bounded gaps” conjecture ...

Using AI and computer automation, researchers have developed a 'conjecture generator' that creates mathematical conjectures, which are considered to be the starting point for developing mathematical ...

University of Florida provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. What happens when someone claims to have proved a famous conjecture? Well, it depends. When a paper is submitted, ...

It is well-known that our intuition is not perfect. We are predictably irrational in a huge number of ways in our everyday lives. But what about something a bit more sophisticated? Are there times ...