In the early 1970s mathematician Donald Knuth spent a sabbatical with his wife in Norway. The time was meant to be spent relaxing. Yet one night he woke up his partner in a state of agitation. He ...

What is the largest natural number possible? By using the word natural, I have ruled out the possibility that you simply answer infinity (∞) to torpedo the guessing game. But even if we allowed ...

You would be forgiven for thinking that real numbers are, in fact, real — the word is right there in the name. But physicist Nicolas Gisin doesn’t think so. He’s not questioning the mathematical ...

Have you ever sat in a math classroom and wondered, “When will I ever use this?” You might have asked yourself this question when you first encountered “imaginary” numbers, and with good reason: What ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

David Harvey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Around 1956, the famous Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov conjectured that this is the best possible way to multiply two ...