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 ...

Like physics, math has its own set of “fundamental particles”—the prime numbers, which can’t be broken down into smaller ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

Image made with elements from Canva. Let’s go back to grade school—do you remember learning about prime numbers? They’re numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one. So 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and ...

While I was looking for a gift for a child’s birthday, a math book fell into my hands. I am always fascinated when authors write about abstract scientific topics for children, whether it’s on Albert ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

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 ...

Digitally delicate prime numbers become composite with this one weird trick. Math researchers proved these primes exist using the bucket proof method. There are no known examples so far, but ...