Andrew Wiles gave a series of lectures cryptically titled “Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves, and Galois Representations” at a mathematics conference in Cambridge, England, in June…

“Add little to little and there will be a big pile.” —Ovid When we build complex technologies, despite our best efforts and our desire for clean logic, they often end up being…

Workers count votes at a polling place in Worcester, Mass.SuperStock via Getty Images Last Thursday the UK’s Conservative Party stomped to an electoral victory that fairly shocked…

Vladimir Voevodsky had no sooner sat himself down at the sparkling table, set for a dinner party at the illustrious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, than he overturned…

The 21-kiloton, underwater Baker nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll, 1946U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps via Wikipedia When opposing nations gained access to nuclear weapons, it…

A still from Prudential’s commercial, showing the largest domino to ever be toppled. The point was to make a spectacle of the power of compound interest.Courtesy of Prudential It’s…

Last Tuesday afternoon, 17-year-old Tommy George dragged the remains of a Rube Goldberg machine into his teacher’s classroom. Designed and built by Tommy and the other members of…

At about 2:30pm on May 6, 2010, an asset management firm began executing a series of orders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Located in Overland Park, Kansas, Waddell & Reed…

Sir Partha DasguptaJohn Steele Wealth itself is observable and objective, a measure a value. And something has value if it is desired. But isn’t desire inescapably subjective? If…

In 1950, with the Cold War in full swing, Soviet journalists were looking desperately for something to help them fill their anti-American propaganda quota. In January of that year,…