For centuries, prime numbers have captured the imaginations of mathematicians, who continue to search for new patterns that help identify them and the way they’re distributed among other numbers.

Mathematics is often about uncovering patterns. For example, certain areas of topology revolve around categorizing knots or geometric shapes, and number theory explores properties such as the ...

Prime numbers are the ones that have only two factors: 1 and itself. Credit: Ssindhwani / Wikimedia Commons Prime numbers are those divisible only by themselves and by one. Despite their apparent ...

Mathematicians have taken a step forward in understanding patterns within the primes, numbers divisible only by 1 and themselves. According to the new work, the population of prime numbers contains an ...

Who’s that in the maze? It’s you. And you again. This isn’t just a setup for super selfies — it’s a sprawling mirror maze with lessons to teach. “A Mirror Maze: Numbers in Nature,” at the Arizona ...

The following is an excerpt from Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, by Eugenia Cheng Mathematics can be thought of as many things: a language, a tool, a game. It might ...

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, ...

Prime numbers just got less lonely. A proof announced this week claims to show that the number of primes with a near-neighbour that is also a prime number is infinite – although the “near-neighbour” ...

A $1 million prize has been awarded to a mathematician for work that could one day unlock the secrets of prime numbers. The King of Norway will officially present the prestigious Abel prize in ...

For 50 years, mathematicians have believed that the total number of real numbers is unknowable. A new proof suggests otherwise. In October 2018, David Asperó was on holiday in Italy, gazing out a car ...