Explaining the complex structure of tropical forests is one of the great challenges in ecology. An issue of special interest is the distribution of different sizes of trees, something which is of ...

With her homeland mired in war, the sphere-packing number theorist Maryna Viazovska has become the second woman to win a Fields Medal in the award’s 86-year history. How to safely reopen offices, ...

Winter means tangerines. The joy of sitting in a warm room and peeling tangerines until your fingers turn yellow is a luxury that can only be savored in winter. As I was eating tangerines, I looked at ...

How bees, beer cans and big data all solve the same problem: not enough space. By Steven Strogatz Photo illustrations by Jens Mortensen Each installment of “Math, Revealed” starts with an object, ...

Have you ever wondered about the best way to pack a finite number of identical spheres into a shape-shifting flexible container, like a convex hull? An intuitively simple problem concerning the best ...

As a simple physics model for crystal and quasicrystal formation, the Hertzian potential describes the interaction between two soft-core colloidal particles. However, explaining why quasicrystals ...

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 ...