The square root of a negative number could easily be regarded as a curious mathematical construction that has little bearing on real life. Indeed, the French polymath René Descartes gave such numbers ...

Imaginary numbers might seem like unicorns and goblins — interesting but irrelevant to reality. But for describing matter at its roots, imaginary numbers turn out to be essential. They seem to be ...

A century ago, the strange behavior of atoms and elementary particles led physicists to formulate a new theory of nature. That theory, quantum mechanics, found immediate success, proving its worth ...

Several years ago one of us, Toni, asked another of us, Marco, to come to his office at the Institute of Photonic Sciences, a large research center in Castelldefels near Barcelona. “There is a problem ...

What is the largest natural number possible? By using the word natural, I have ruled out the possibility that you simply answer infinity (∞) to torpedo the guessing game. But even if we allowed ...

The University of Colorado Center for Number Theory has interests spanning number theory, from analytic to algebraic. There is a focus on arithmetic geometry, including arithmetic dynamics, elliptic ...

Scientists have found what they say is a link between complex number theory and string theory. A mathematician and physicist working together found the connection, which they say is part of plotting ...