When checking that solutions to certain problems are correct, it turns out, you can’t get around the inherent complexity of ...

New computer tools have the potential to revolutionize the practice of mathematics by providing more-reliable proofs of mathematical results than have ever been possible in the history of humankind.

For ages, countless mathematicians have advanced mathematics through proofs. This is because proof is a key tool for developing new theories and solving problems. That’s why a discussion about proofs ...

Mathematician Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London is training computers how to prove one of the most famous problems in math history: Fermat’s last theorem. Resolving the problem isn’t the point.

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman. In 1997, Deep Blue, a supercomputer built by IBM, did the unexpected: it defeated chess ...

In ancient Greece, Euclid showed that if you agree on a small list of preliminary principles, or axioms, you can use deductive reasoning to reveal all sorts of new mathematical truths. But although ...