Essay Pi Day with John Horton Conway, revisited March 12, 2025 Over several years, while writing Genius at Play, my biography of the always wondrous yet often pernickety one-of-a-kind mathematician John Horton Conway, I was plied by my subject with a smorgasbord of tales. Read More
Interview Ra煤l Rojas on The Language of Mathematics January 23, 2025 The history of language and mathematical notation is filled with chance and serendipity. I want readers to see mathematics as a living organism, a living subject, with a history. Mathematics is all about logical truth, and the discipline seems forged in steel. But in fact, mathematics evolved through different phases. Read More
Essay Radio then and now January 17, 2024 When I was a kid, you could actually look inside a radio and see all sorts of neat stuff in there, like the amazing mechanical linkages of the tuning mechanism, or the mysterious, soft yellow glow of the vacuum tubes (the transistor hadn鈥檛 yet completely replaced tubes). The wonders of what I could see inside my parents鈥� 1947 AM/FM radio console hooked me. Read More
Essay Pi is magic March 14, 2023 Pi is magic. It is a number that is infinite, universal, transcendental, and irrational. It appears everywhere, and my mathematician friends tell me that Pi is as close to religion as you can get in math. Read More
Essay Why prove it? December 13, 2022 Years ago, a student in an introductory math class asked me: 鈥淲hy do you聽prove everything; why don鈥檛 you just tell us?鈥� Ever since, I have pondered that聽question. Read More
Interview The challenge of popularizing mathematics September 19, 2022 Of all the academic disciplines, mathematics is perhaps the most difficult to popularize. One must navigate a subject that is not always received with excitement by the general public. Read More
Essay Pi Day March 11, 2022 As every mathematician knows, 3.14 is only a rough approximation to 蟺, one that fails to reveal its most fascinating properties, of being irrational and in fact transcendental. Read More
Essay Finding mystery, truth, and beauty on mathematicians鈥� chalkboards August 13, 2021 I grew up in a house on the campus of a boarding school in Connecticut. My father taught history and coached the wrestling team, while my mother taught art. Our lives were totally immersed in this insular academic world鈥攖he school was our home and our playground. Read More
Essay Who was Euclid? June 29, 2021 Euclid of Alexandria: mathematician, author of the Elements of Geometry. Utterer of apocryphal quips including the famous put-down to Ptolemy I: 鈥榯here is no royal road to geometry鈥�. Who was he? What did he look like? Read More
Essay Celebrating women in STEM February 11, 2021 International Day of Women and Girls in Science marks an opportunity to celebrate the brilliant women whose ideas have graced our bookshelves and touched our minds. Read More
Essay Can logic be fun? November 24, 2020 Many people have tried to define logic. James Thurber wrote, 鈥淪ince it is possible to touch a clock without stopping it, it follows that one can start a clock without touching it.鈥� Read More
Essay The puzzle of our future humanity:聽One mathematician鈥檚 perspective July 08, 2020 While completing this piece, the world came together in shared sadness, pain, and grief. This time has been an awakening for some and a reminder for others of the injustice all around us and its long and ugly legacy. Read More
Video Learning at home? Try The Joy of SET March 31, 2020 Looking for fun ways to keep kids engaged with math during school closures? Have you ever played the addictive card game聽SET? Have you ever wondered about the connections between games and mathematics? Read More
Interview David Hand on Dark Data February 18, 2020 In the era of big data, it is easy to imagine that we have all the information we need to make good decisions. But in fact the data we have are never complete, and may be only the tip of the iceberg. Read More
Interview David Richeson on Tales of Impossibility November 03, 2019 Tales of Impossibility聽recounts the intriguing story of the so-called 鈥榩roblems of antiquity,鈥� four of the most famous and studied questions in the history of mathematics. Read More
