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 ...

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 ...

A basic feature of number theory, prime numbers are also a fundamental building block of computer science, from hashtables to cryptography. Everyone knows that a prime number is one that cannot be ...

Meet the new largest known prime number. It starts with a 4, continues on for 23 million digits, then ends with a 1. As is true with all prime numbers, it can only be evenly divided by one and itself.

While I was looking for a gift for a child’s birthday, a math book fell into my hands. I am always fascinated when authors write about abstract scientific topics for children, whether it’s on Albert ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...