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 ...

Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner once wrote that mathematics has the uncanny ability to describe the universe around us. That’s the spirit behind the new book “The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build 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, ...