In 1611 German mathematician Johannes Kepler made a conjecture about the densest way to stack oranges or other spheres with a minimum of space between them. It seemed nothing could beat the standard ...

High-dimensional spheres can have a much wider variety of structures than mathematicians thought possible. If you’ve ever been stuck in traffic on a rainy afternoon, you’ve probably watched raindrops ...

Mathematicians have solved the century-old triangulation conjecture, a major problem in topology that asks whether all spaces can be subdivided into smaller units. The question is deceptively simple: ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Earlier this year, Maryna Viazovska showed ...