hyperbolic geometry – Quanta Magazine

A Master of Numbers and Shapes Who Is Rewriting Arithmetic

Erica Klarreich — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 12:55:30 +0000

In the run-up to the presentation of the Fields Medals — mathematics’ highest honor — the identity of the winners is always a closely guarded secret. But this time around, one name has been on everyone’s lips: Peter Scholze, of the University of Bonn in Germany. Today, those expectations proved justified. The 30-year-old Scholze was awarded the medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians...

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The Beautiful Mathematical Explorations of Maryam Mirzakhani

Moira Chas — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:27:49 +0000

The meanderings of sadness that news of Maryam Mirzakhani’s death brought compelled me to read every article I could find about her, and when I could not find more articles, I started to read the comments of the readers. Many of them wrote that they saw her as “unrelatable and incomprehensible,” given that they were “math challenged.” However, Maryam was the opposite of unrelatable.

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The Oracle of Arithmetic

Erica Klarreich — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:30:10 +0000

In 2010, a startling rumor filtered through the number theory community and reached Jared Weinstein. Apparently, some graduate student at the University of Bonn in Germany had written a paper that redid “Harris-Taylor” — a 288-page book dedicated to a single impenetrable proof in number theory — in only 37 pages. The 22-year-old student, Peter Scholze, had found a way to sidestep one of the most...

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Sphere Packing Solved in Higher Dimensions

Erica Klarreich — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 16:15:57 +0000

In a pair of papers posted online this month, a Ukrainian mathematician has solved two high-dimensional versions of the centuries-old “sphere packing” problem. In dimensions eight and 24 (the latter dimension in collaboration with other researchers), she has proved that two highly symmetrical arrangements pack spheres together in the densest possible way. Mathematicians have been studying sphere...

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A Tenacious Explorer of Abstract Surfaces

Erica Klarreich — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:06:20 +0000

As an 8-year-old, Maryam Mirzakhani used to tell herself stories about the exploits of a remarkable girl. Every night at bedtime, her heroine would become mayor, travel the world or fulfill some other grand destiny. Today, Mirzakhani — a 37-year-old mathematics professor at Stanford University — still writes elaborate stories in her mind. The high ambitions haven’t changed...

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