C.H. Waddington’s powerful image of embryonic stem cells specializing on a rolling landscape has captivated biologists since the 1950s. Experimental data is finally confirming, and complicating, his ...

The collective electrical activity of many neurons can be seen as waves propagating through the brain from one region to the ...

The late Ronald Graham wore two hats. He was a renowned mathematician, at one time president of the American Mathematical Society. He was also a serious juggler, and president of the International ...

The puzzle of emergence asks how regularities emerge on macro scales out of uncountable constituent parts. A new framework has researchers hopeful that a solution is near.

Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence doesn’t “think” or “reason” like humans, and how we can create better methods for measuring machine cognition. Building a ...

For the first time in 30 years, computer scientists have found a better way to allocate objects evenly between two groups. Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence ...

John Pavlus is a writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Scientific American, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

A straightforward conjecture about runners moving around a track turns out to be equivalent to many complex mathematical questions. Three new proofs mark the first significant progress on the problem ...

Kevin Hartnett was the senior writer at Quanta Magazine covering mathematics and computer science. His work has been collected in multiple volumes of the “Best Writing on Mathematics” series.

The theoretical computer scientist behind the influential Unique Games Conjecture delights in the wonders of New York’s Washington Square Park, where he ponders the impossible.

Two mathematicians have proved that a straightforward question — how hard is it to untie a knot? — has a complicated answer. Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to ...