When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Ishango bone, from Africa's Congo region, has dozens of parallel notches cut into its surface ...

Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t “exist” outside the minds of ...

Occasionally a reader suggests a topic for my column as with the above title. My thanks. This question is important because it applies to more than mathematics. For example, did Michelangelo create ...

The natives of a remote Polynesian Island invented a binary number system, similar to the one used by computers to calculate, centuries before Western mathematicians did, new research suggests. The ...

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, ...