At the intersection of mathematics and nature, scientists have found intriguing and often beautiful designs. Pinecone scales ...

How can the behavior of elementary particles and the structure of the entire universe be described using the same mathematical concepts? This question is at the heart of recent work by the ...

Benjamin Adric Dunn, a data scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, shows me a picture of unevenly spaced dots arranged vaguely like the rocks at Stonehenge. The overall ...

Is it possible to fill space “cubically” with shapes that act like spheres? A proof at the intersection of geometry and theoretical computer science says yes. In the fourth century, the Greek ...

Mathematicians are “reinventing the wheel” by giving it a new shape. Their newly imagined wheel looks like a many-dimensional guitar pick, and it could theoretically roll in ways beyond our ...

Mathematicians predicted that if they imposed enough restrictions on how a shape might tile space, they could force a periodic pattern to emerge. But they were wrong. One of the oldest and simplest ...