A review of Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics, by John Derbyshire. With the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1994, Derbyshire says, “the Riemann ...

A mathematician who went from obscurity to luminary status in 2013 for cracking a century-old question about prime numbers now claims to have solved another. The problem is similar to—but distinct ...

Prime numbers might just have lost their mystery – and online security could change forever. At a basic level, prime numbers are relatively simple to understand. They can only be divided by themselves ...

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, ...

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 ...