Like physics, math has its own set of “fundamental particles”—the prime numbers, which can’t be broken down into smaller ...

Analytic number theory continues to serve as a cornerstone of modern mathematics through its probing study of zeta functions and their applications. At the heart of this discipline is the classical ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Sometimes mathematicians try to tackle a problem head on, and sometimes they come at it sideways. That’s especially true when the ...

The Riemann zeta function, a central object in analytic number theory, has long intrigued mathematicians and physicists alike. Its non-trivial zeros not only encapsulate the distribution of prime ...

The Basel problem 25 is named from the Swiss city in whose university two of the Bernoulli brothers successively served as professor of mathematics (Jakob, 1687–1705, Johann, 1705–1748). I mentioned ...

Prime numbers are maddeningly capricious. They clump together like buddies on some regions of the number line, but in other areas, nary a prime can be found. So number theorists can’t even roughly ...

The Riemann Hypothesis is widely regarded as the most important unsolved problem in mathematics. Put forward by Bernhard Riemann in 1859, it concerns the positions of the zeros of the Riemann zeta ...