In 1843, William Rowan Hamilton had a four-dimensional flash of insight that still shapes our three-dimensional world. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Around 1900 B.C., a student in the Sumerian city of Nippur, in what’s now Iraq, copied a multiplication table onto a clay tablet. Some 4,000 years later, that schoolwork survives, as do the student’s ...

In his book The Mathematical Universe, mathematician William Dunham wrote of John Venn’s namesake legacy, the Venn diagram, “No one in the long history of mathematics ever became better known for less ...

Researchers in Australia have made a discovery that may shake up the history of mathematics, revealing evidence of applied geometry being used for the purposes of land surveying some 3,700 years ago.

Did you know that every time you look at a skyscraper, a bridge, or even the screen in your hand, you are seeing the power of shapes and measurements in action? This is the world of geometry. At its ...

IN a recent number of NATURE (June 30) there appeared a review of a book by G. Mannoury on the philosophy of mathematics, and the reviewer emphasised a statement of the author to the effect that the ...

Sūnya, nulla, ṣifr, zevero, zip and zilch are among the many names of the mathematical concept of nothingness. Historians, journalists and others have variously identified the symbol’s ...