The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last ...

The Riemann hypothesis is the most important open question in number theory—if not all of mathematics. It has occupied experts for more than 160 years. And the problem appeared both in mathematician ...

Ananyo Bhattacharya is chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann. One of the biggest ...