Chasing (a) Conjecture: Chandrashekhar Khare on proof, persistence, and poetry of mathematics

In Chasing (a) Conjecture, Khare has done more than narrate a personal triumph. He has rendered the abstract palpably human, ...
The Texas Observer

‘The Weil Conjectures’ Rewards the Intellectually Adventurous

The Latin root of the word conjecture, conicere, means to throw things together. Think of Jackson Pollock splashing different paints onto a canvas and hoping for some kind of coherent result. In ...
Quanta Magazine

‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture

Consider a pencil lying on your desk. Try to spin it around so that it points once in every direction, but make sure it sweeps over as little of the desk’s surface as possible. You might twirl the ...
Quanta Magazine

A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle

On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies a wealth of mathematics. In mathematics, a simple problem is often not what it seems. Earlier this ...
The New York Times

Two Brilliant Siblings and the Curious Consolations of Math

At the 1994 reception for the prestigious Kyoto Prize, awarded for achievements that contribute to humanity, the French mathematician André Weil turned to his fellow honoree, the film director Akira ...