The symbols we use every day have fascinating and surprisingly recent origins, explains author Joseph Mazur in his new book A few years ago friends and I were talking about the origins of written ...

War in Europe is a staple topic in the study of history, but there’s one major conflict most history books won’t teach you: the battle of the equal sign, =. These two parallel lines were, in fact, the ...

Mastering mathematical symbols is essential for success in various fields, from science to technology. The article breaks down fundamental symbols like arithmetic operations, comparisons, variables, ...

In the third century BCE, Apollonius of Perga asked how many circles one could draw that would touch three given circles at exactly one point each. It would take 1,800 years to prove the answer: eight ...

Symplectic geometry is a relatively new field with implications for much of modern mathematics. Here’s what it’s all about. In the early 1800s, William Rowan Hamilton discovered a new kind of ...