Would you like to be a millionaire? There are several ways to fulfill this dream. For two decades the U.S. edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? promised a million dollars if you could answer 15 ...

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 ...

“We’ve been stuck and running out of ideas on the problem for a long time, so it’s automatically exciting when anyone comes up with new insights,” said James Maynard, a mathematician at the University ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Sometimes mathematicians try to tackle a problem head on, and sometimes they come at it sideways. That’s especially true when the ...

A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented ...

The online computer game “Is this prime?” tests a player’s knowledge of prime numbers—and just surpassed 2,999,999 attempts. Give it a whirl. The Greek mathematician Euclid may very well have proved, ...

Imagine a number made up of a vast string of ones: 1111111…111. Specifically, 136,279,841 ones in a row. If we stacked up that many sheets of paper, the resulting tower would stretch into the ...