This is an updated version of a story first published on May 5, 2024. For many high school students returning to class, it may seem like geometry and trigonometry were created by the Greeks as a form ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? A 125-page proof posted to arXiv may represent a huge breakthrough in geometric ...

A French mathematician has completed the classification of all convex pentagons, and therefore all convex polygons, that tile the plane. One of the oldest problems in geometry asks which shapes tile ...

In 1917, the Japanese mathematician Sōichi Kakeya posed what at first seemed like nothing more than a fun exercise in geometry. Lay an infinitely thin, inch-long needle on a flat surface, then rotate ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1917, the Japanese mathematician Sōichi Kakeya posed what at first seemed like nothing more than a fun exercise in geometry. Lay an ...