Number theorist Andrew Granville on what mathematics really is — and why objectivity is never quite within reach. In 2012, the mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki claimed he had solved the abc conjecture ...

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. In 1997, Deep Blue, a supercomputer built by IBM, did the unexpected: it defeated chess ...

The verdict, it seems, is in: artificial intelligence is not about to replace mathematicians. That is the immediate takeaway from the “First Proof” challenge—perhaps the most robust test yet of the ...

Marijn Heule turns mathematical statements into something like Sudoku puzzles, then has computers go to work on them. His proofs have been called “disgusting,” but they go beyond what any human can do ...

An artificial intelligence can translate maths problems written in plain English to formal code, making them easier for computers to solve in a crucial step towards building a machine capable of ...