Mathematicians predicted that if they imposed enough restrictions on how a shape might tile space, they could force a periodic pattern to emerge. But they were wrong. One of the oldest and simplest ...

In an old Indian parable, six blind men each touch a different part of an elephant. They disagree about what the elephant must look like: Is it smooth or rough? Is it like a snake (so thinks the man ...

Hannah Cairo found herself stuck on a problem that wouldn’t leave her mind. It wasn’t a regular homework assignment—it was a decades-old mathematical puzzle believed to be true by leading experts in ...