$Math in the Media$

Also see the Blog on Math Blogs

Tony Phillips' Take Previous Columns

2020

December: Neolithic geometry; Geometry and ballet; "The Movement to Modernize Math Class"

November: Vaughan Jones obituary in Nature; Tying knots in molecules

October: "Knot too difficult" in The New York Times; The fractal structure of the human heart; Viral video: "Math isn't real."; Mathematicians and their chalk, on CNN

September: Bayes's Theorem in the New York Times; $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$ in fusion reactor; Topology and physics, the recent history

August: Ron Graham obituaries; Dogs' ages in human years: a new rule; Language learning: an emergent phenomenon?

June/July: "Travels with John Conway"; Covid-19 and the cubic; More spaghetti math

May: John Conway, "magical mathematician"; Topological analysis of zebrafish stripes

April: Three is a crowd; 2020 Abel Prize in the New York Times; Freeman Dyson, mathematician?; Logarithms and the Coronavirus

March: A mathematician as mayor of Paris?; Quadratic equations in the New York Times; Death of a "hidden figure"

February: Alain Connes in Le Monde on mathematical creativity; Mechanics of knots; The elementary functions throw a party; "Geometry sings the blues"

January: Julia Robinson in Science News; Counting in the wrong language

2019

December: John Tate obituary in The New York Times; Stability of hyperbolic origami; On mathematical creativity, in The New Yorker; "Simple Parking Strategies"

November: A "Rosetta Stone" from Linear Algebra; Progress in rapid integer factorization; Chaos in the Wall Street Journal; Heliknotons

October: Math in The Paris Review; Do Not Erase; No universal lottery ticket without the Axiom of Choice

September: Mitchell Feigenbaum obituary in the New York Times; Mathematics and the Visual Cortex; Much ado about PEMDAS

August: Alexandre Grothendieck, math artist; The mathematics of knitting; A "Leafy Mathematical Mystery"; Alan Turing obituary in the New York Times

June - July: "Math Teachers Should Be More Like Football Coaches"; Goro Shimura obituary in the New York Times; Archimedean protein nano-cages; Math and the candidate

May: 'Maths anxiety' in the UK; Karen Uhlenbeck and "The Bubble-Verse"; Scutoids

April: Forgetting, biexponentially; Bees do it; Karen Uhlenbeck's Abel Prize

March: Edray Goins, black mathematician; Jean Bourgain obit in Nature; Möbius kaleidocycles

February: "Learnability can be undecidable."; Numbers in the brain

January: Venn in Wisconsin; Ada Lovelace back in the news; "The Yoda of Silicon Valley"; Artificial Intelligence and the future of insight

2018

December: "Visualizing Scissors Congruence"; The physics and mathematics of crumpled paper

November: Math and the genome; New results on Heronian triangles; Math in the Arts and Crafts movement; "The weird world of one-sided objects"

October: Riemann Hypothesis back in the news; The mathematics of blowing bubbles; Topology of city neighborhoods; Nanometric quasiperiodic tilings

September: Math and the Beatles; "No gender differences in early math cognition"; "Make Your Daughter Practice Math"; The 2018 Fields Medals; That's the way the spaghetti snaps

August: Ultrasmall dodecahedra; Honey bees and the concept of zero

June-July: "Who needs Calculus? Not High-Schoolers"; Desalination and Alan Turing; Geometric taxonomy

May: Dancing vector fields; "Does Math Make You Smarter?"; Math rescues French science

April: Abel Prize for Robert Langlands; Nature's view of mathematics; Parallel transport of qubits

March: Topology with a quantum computer; Math and the quacking frog (Crinia georgiana); French math education: Villani to the rescue

February: History and Sociology of the Fields Medal; "Fractals: God's Beauty in Numbers"

January: Why math majors change major; Covering a sphere with zones; Topological waves in the ocean

2017

December: $360^{\circ}$ of hyperbolic reality in the New York Times; New trove of Turing correspondence; Women mathematicians on "Science Friday"; Voevodsky obituary in Nature

November: Much ado about the history of zero; "Pariah moonshine"; Talk of numbers on Connecticut NPR

October: Polygonal billiards; Preserving helicity; Mirzakhani obituary in Nature

September: "Strange topology" in physics; The wrong automaton; Millennium Prizes at the box office; Australia vs. mathematics; Math and the solar eclipse; Plimpton 322 is back in the news

August: Maryam Mirzakhani; No more pentagonal tilings; Geometry problems on Long Island

June-July: A virtual trisectrix in space?; "Math Champion Wins With Answer About Pecking Chicks"

May: Topological invariants in abstract art; A cellular automaton on a lizard's back; Yves Meyer's Abel Prize, celebrated in Nature; Change math teaching: slow down

April: Math and the gerrymander; Flexible structures from 3D tessellations; Fractal dimension of Rorschach blots

March: Boundary rigidity for planet Earth; Michael Atiyah in the Metropolitan Museum; Self-assembly of giant polyhedral molecules

February: Eight-crossing molecular knot; Probabilistic inference in monkeys; Music and math on La Repubblica-TV

January: Brain function topology as a diagnostic tool; Math in a New Yorker "Daily Shout"; Farewell to Numberplay: modes of problem-solving

2016

December: Linear algebra and belief systems; Math and the perfect cup of coffee; A natural knot in an important protein

November: Nobel Prize in (topology in) Physics, 2016; Bye-bye celebration of $\pi$?; An ultratorus in every cell

October: "Space Race Math Whizzes"; Math and the brain; Induction in Britain; Andrew Hacker on NPR

September: Confidence, Women and Calculus I; Update on Smale's 7th problem; Another update on abc

August: The longest proof ever; "Topology at the Tonys"; "L. A. Math"; "Don't call me a prodigy: the rising stars of European mathematics"; U.S. postage stamp for "Stand and Deliver"; U.S. team wins I.M.O.; The New Yorker and Andrew Hacker at MoMath

June/July: Sunflowers, Alan Turing and the Fibonacci sequence; Compute at your own risk; "Fresh solutions" to the 4-body problem; Math $-$ a piece of cake?

May: "The Man Who Knew Infinity"; Who needs Math? (Cont.); Mathematics: a young man's game?; "The Great Math Mystery," redux on NOVA

April: Andrew Wiles' Abel Prize; New patterns in the primes; Who needs Math? (Cont.); Christopher Zeeman, 1925-2016

March: Calculus in Babylon?; Truchet train-tracks at the Museum of Mathematics; Who needs Math?

February: The latest largest prime; Undecidability in physics; What do marine biologists think of math?

January: Logic and Lewis Carroll; Brian Greene in The New Yorker; Math in The New York Times; Update on "abc"

2015

December: Riemann hypothesis proved ... NOT; Geometry in the rodent hippocampus

November: The abc conjecture in Nature; Chaos theory without equations; Bedtime math boosts kids' scores; "Maths whizz solves a master's riddle"

October: Fibonacci on the wall; Topology and the mechanics of knots; A maths colouring book for adults; The inheritance of math anxiety

September: "They're No. 1: U.S. Wins Math Olympiad"; New pentagonal tiling in The Guardian; Terence Tao in The New York Times Magazine

August: More about John Nash; Möbius strips of light; The mathematics of cortical folding; Lives of mathematicians, reviewed in Nature

June/July: The death of a beautiful mind; Mathematicians and Blue Crabs; "What Einstein Should Have Known"

May: "The Great Math Mystery" on NOVA; Math in the New York Times; Robert Langlands in the Toronto Star

April: Mathematicians on the gridiron; Traveling Salesman on vacation; Books about the mathematical life, reviewed in Nature; $\pi$ in The New Yorker

March: Chicks and the number line; Long-term effects of gender bias in math education; Picture$\rightarrow$text (and language) translation via linear algebra

February: Yitang Zhang and twin primes in the New Yorker; Grothendieck obituary in Nature; Mathematics and Ebola

January: Persistent homology in the human brain; Alan Turing in the movies again; Dennis Sullivan in La Stampa; Grigori Perelman on Russian TV

2014

December: Alexander Grothendieck, 1928-2014; New Zealand robin arithmetic; "Solving for XX:" women and math in the Berkeley Daily Planet; Knots in physics

November: The math of the lasso; Lifesaving statistics

October: The Best Language for Math?; Gauss and the Art of Pizza Eating; Artur Avila in O Globo

September: Sphere packing in the New Scientist; 2014 Fields Medals in the media; Putting more math into common discourse

August: Mathematics education in the New York Times; New equilateral polyhedra; Multimillion-Dollar Minds

June-July: Ramanujan, Ono in Scientific American; Sperner's Lemma helps split the rent; Spontaneous hemihelices

May: Mathematician = the best job; Mathematics and English literature; Math anxiety: in the genes?; "Going Gaga for Math," with Cédric Villani

April: "Fibonacci Mandala"; Quasicrystal, Penrose tiling; "Both Genders Think Women Are Bad at Basic Math"; Math and March Madness; More MoMath in the Times

March: Mathematicians, the NSA and domestic spying (cont.); Homer Simpson, Math Wizard; Flipping pancakes with mathematics; The neurophysiology of the perception of mathematical beauty

February: Ancient Chinese multiplication table; Turing in the Times; "Bad Astronomy" takes on Math; Binary arithmetic in Polynesia

January: The mathematics of bee colony failure; After the PISA report; Is math boring, or what?; At least a little; What the Times doesn't know about math instruction; Edward Frenkel on math and borscht

2013

December: Sophie Kowalevski in the New York Times; How much math do we really need?; Mathematicians in Science: Bourguignon and Gauss

November: MoMath in the New York Times; Edward Frenkel in the media; Women in science (and in math)

October: Numbers on the brain; "Math Wars" analyzed in the New York Times; Love and Math in the Wall Street Journal; Mathematicians, the NSA and domestic spying

September: Moiré patterns and quantum fractals; The differential geometry of the Endoplasmic Reticulum

August: Random voltage improves math learning; Turing instabilities, hallucinations, and the beginnings of symbolic culture; Mathematical models of cancer therapy; "The Rosetta Stone of Mathematics"; PBS tackles: "Does math exist?"

June-July: Geometric Unity?; Twin primes on NPR, and on Slate; What it feels like to be bad in math; 4D polytope gives 3D-printed puzzle

May: "We are in the midst of math all the time."; Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math?; "Mary, Queen of Maths"

April: The 3-body problem and free homotopy; Percolation and fractal dimension; "The Math Problem in Good Will Hunting Is Easy"

March: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the elevated dodecahedron; New prime in the news; "Chaos" in Le Monde; Is Algebra Necessary (Cont.)

February: Math Rap on NPR; 3-manifolds in the Scientific American; "Topological colloids"; Discalculia in Nature

January: Discovery of an organic trefoil knot; MoMath in the press; The Atlantic takes on the Common Core Standards; Cédric Villani, mediatic medalist

2012

December: The pain of math anxiety; Information theory in biological cells; On arithmetic and the unconscious; American Educator takes on the Khan Academy

November: A new Strogatz series in the New York Times; Popularity in hyperbolic space; Soviet math (and anti-semitism) in The New Criterion

October: Emmy Noether in The New York Times; Grisha Perelman in Playboy; The "abc conjecture" in Nature, Science, and the N. Y. Times; The Museum of Mathematics in Nature

September: Visualizing the curvature tensor; Math in the plant physiology curriculum; Is Algebra Necessary?; New strategies for the Prisoner's Dilemma

August: Knots and slipknots in protein molecules; Plug for pure math in the Daily News; Add equations, lose citations

June/July: Szemerédi's Theorem in the Guardian; Topological analysis of basketball; functional MRIs of Math Anxiety; Goldbach Conjecture progress in the Scientific American and in Le Monde; New Math Institute in Senegal

May: Racism and mathematics; Frobenius on my mind; Topics in computational biology

April: Complexity theory in the New York Times; Spermatozoon calculus; Pi Day in Greenburgh

March: Graphics prize for complex graphs; Medieval Islamic quasi-periodic tilings (cont.); "The Power of Numbers"; Turing at 100; math in Nature?

February: The mathematics of pasta; Correlation from information theory; The hit potential equation; Numerosity in neural networks; Splendeur et misère of mathematicians

January: Pigeon math in the New York Times; Of ants and basketball players; The Khan Academy in the math classroom

2011

December: "How mathematicians rule the markets"; "How to fix Math Education"; Fixing Math Education (cont.); Why Science Majors change their minds, and why not; Monte Carlo methods in mammalian evolution

November: Math in the American Educator; Nobel Prize for Quasicrystals; Archimedes in the New York Times; String theory - the new calculus?; "Biology is too complex to be unified by mathematics"

October: A fax from Archimedes; "Pure mathematics - and that's the problem ..."; Random matrices against HIV

September: Dyscalculia; MoMath in the New York Times; Explosive percolation revisited; Fixing math education

August: "The unplanned impact of mathematics"; Modular DNA computation; Truncated octahedral supramolecular cages; Math and Art in the Hamptons

June-July: Taming Complexity; Capturing Rogue Waves

May: Geomagical squares; Early childhood math in the Times; The "innocent, unconscious" biases that deflect girls from math

April: Multicolor tilings in liquid crystals; How to grow a mind; Number and Language; The sound of π on NPR; John Milnor and the media

March: Enumerative combinatorics in the news; The shape of musical chords

February: Geometric order in Nature's zoo; Cellular automata, literally; Meanwhile, abroad

January: Plimpton 322 in the New York Times; ... and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus; Math and music in three dimensions; WikiLeaks and NP-completeness

2010

December: Math, Models and Mystification; Topology is not enough; Markov models for Bengalese finch songs

November: L'affaire Bogdanov back in Le Monde; Two (equally good) heads better than one; The calm before the tipping point; "Proofiness"

October: Original math on Futurama; The math of consciousness

September: The "rising star hypothesis" tested in math; "Street-fighting Math" on Boing Boing; A theorem in Biochemistry; P and NP, blogs and wiki

August: Lévy flight for fish; Hardy and Ramanujan at Lincoln Center; Electoral math in The New Yorker

June/July: Complexity, diversity and simultaneous diagonalization; "Hands-on and body-in geometry"; Laplacian dynamics on networks; A new use for instantons

May: Simple connectedness in the New York Review of Books; Abstract mathematician = psycho?; E8, cobalt niobate and the golden mean

April: Electronic topology of annulenes; "The Joy of x"; Issey Miyake meets William Thurston; Fermat's last stand; New math symbols

March: Eulerian circuits in the giant panda genome; The Joint Mathematics Meetings covered in Science; "We don't use algebra"

February: "Alice's adventures in algebra"; The wizard's clock; Packing tetrahedra into a quasicrystal; A weekly math column in The New York Times online

January: Le Monde: So few mathematicians, so much math; Basic instinct: math; Cognitive science applied to teaching math; Back to Antikythera

2009

December: Order from chaos in Monterey Bay; Math Ed in the City Journal; Homomorphic encryption

November: "Israel Gelfand, Math Giant"; Too much math in French schools?; "The Sophisticated Side of Elementary Mathematics"; Martin Gardner celebrated in the New York Times; "Masssively collaborative mathematics"

October: UK apologizes to Alan Turing; Markov chains for the Indus script; Hiding behind Hermite polynomials; Page-ranking the food chain

September: Progress on the Thomson problem; Math: "ubiquitous, supercool, ..."; "The Idolatry of Numbers"; Packing Platonic solids

August: The math of slithering; NYU's Abel Trifecta; Those evil mathematicians, again; Cortical circuits for mental arithmetic

June/July: Math on the Wild Side; "Intimidatingly awesome" knot theory project; Beyond Turing machines

May: Mersenne primes on NPR; "The identification of nontriviality"; Freeman Dyson's magic number; Of math and money

April: Math project wins Intel; Big earmark for mathematical talent detection; "Explosive Percolation"; Mirrors that don't reverse, and others; "The genius who came in from the cold"

March: Bees do it; Congresswoman Waters disses mathematicians; Barry Cipra at the Joint Meetings

February: "Cuddly Topology"; Hiding behind curvature

January: Netflix and the singular value decomposition; "physical reality embodies simple mathematical laws"; Math Ed in the news

2008

December: Random molecular tilings; Roach trigonometry; Math on the Fringe

November: "Samurai mathematician"; The diagonalization of physics; Science goes to MathFest; Math meets the campaign ad on YouTube

October: Solzhenitsyn mathematician; Non-verbal number acuity counts; NIMBioS

September: Antikythera link to Archimedes?; Archimedean approximation to Penrose tiling; "Swinging with math"

August: "Mathematics of the spheres"; E8 in The New Yorker; Geometry of the mental number line; "Girls = Boys at Math"

June/July: Aztec area algorithms; Polyhedral cages in nerve synapses; Teaching math with concrete examples?

May: Hearing molecular drums; Markov Clusters in the tree of life; The path to algebra: fractions

April: The hole truth?; Midge dynamics in Lake Myvatn; An 80-vertex polytope in Physical Review

March: Professor protagonist; Parallel transport for qubits; Physical Chemistry in 4D; Physical insight into a hard combinatorial problem

February: Numeral cognition and language; "The computational realization of gesture"; The mathematics of choosiness; "A Mathematical Gem"

January: Holographic algorithms; The Gömbök; Math and macromolecular architecture; "Everything in our world is purely mathematical - including you"

2007

December: cosmic geometries; Euclid in China, in 1607; First encounters in strange places; Math for the birds, or maybe not
November: How complex is mathematics?; Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language; Nash equilibria for bacteria
October: Hardy and Ramanujan - the play; Hardy and Ramanujan - the novel; Math: Gift from God or Work of Man?; Women, Girls and Math - on NPR
September: OMG! Math is cool!; Electrical geometry: the Elephant-nose fish; Origami pinecones; The Myth. The Math. The Sex.
August: "A Twist on the Möbius Band"; Geometry and the Imagination; Homer Simpson: "Mmm....p"
June/July: Too good at math?; Mathematical patterns in songs; Curvature and the growth of cells
May 2007: Computing with locomotives; Mathematical tools needed; Misaligned math tests
April 2007: E8 in the New York Times; E8 in the media; Intel silver and bronze for math projects; Cooking Gaussian curvature; "Journeys to the Distant Fields of Prime"
March 2007: Fibonacci music; Medieval Islamic quasi-periodic tilings
February 2007: Ricci flow on Science cover; x e-x in a tropical rainforest.; Sculptor and mathematician; "Proof at a roll of the dice."
January 2007: Nine lawyers and a mathematician; The math of swarms; Math propaganda on Bay Area TV; "I was a teenage angle trisector."; Mathematician becomes "Genome Sleuth"

2006

December 2006: Rebellion at Topology; Spidrons; "As Math Scores Lag ..."; Math, Podcast from the Ozarks
November 2006: The Emperor of Math; "Numbers are Male, said Pythagoras ..."; Next year in Marienbad: chaos; "Less happy + less confidence = good math student"
October 2006: The Geometry of Musical Chords; Epithelial topology; Mathematical error control
September 2006: Math: Whale Songs --> Kaleidoscopic Images; The Poincaré Conjecture on National Public Radio; ... and in the New York Times; More math on NPR: encryption; soccer-ball design
August 2006: Summertime, when math losses come easy; Math at the World Cup; Gravitational waves in the news; Nanoscale Minimal Surface?
June/July 2006: "The N.S.A's Math Problem"; Void in a golden cage; Now Math Diplomacy - I; Now Math Diplomacy - II
May 2006: 1+ 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 = a poem; "A Helix with a Handle"; Dynamics of Roach Congregation
April 2006: Counting Ben Franklin's magic squares; Chaos in the deep; The differential geometry of quantum computation
March 2006: Fractals finger suspect Pollocks; Plant growth and the Golden Ratio, re-evaluated; Mathematical Incompleteness in the Scientific American
February 2006: "The Geometry of the Jungle"; Deal or No Deal?; Cuboctahedral vesicles in eukaryotic cells
January 2006: The Euclidean metric and jail time; Mathematical patterns in asthma attacks; Atiyah pulls the strings

2005

December 2005: Penfield NY, a front in "the nationwide math wars"; Glacial climate cycles and the least common multiple; Math on the Millennium Bridge
November 2005: The math of meniscus mountaineering; Hermann Weyl, remembered in Nature; A new topology for the internet
October 2005: Math and the art of mattress flipping; Virus geometry; Dirac: algebraist or geometer?
September 2005: Math and narrative on Mykonos; World's largest nano-deltahedron; Fibonacci numbers on microstructures?
August 2005: Penrose tiling Down Under; Math and the Unicorn Tapestries
June/July 2005: Plaster math models as art; The math behind "Intelligent Design"; Archimedes palimpsest update
May 2005: The math beneath the Interplanetary Superhighway; Peter Lax in the New York Times; The math of craquelure; Proof checking by computer assistants
April 2005: Differential geometry and the Venus Flytrap; Wrong, Wrong and Wrong; Amateur math in ancient Japan
March 2005: More Origami Mathematics; Algorithmic complexity in evolution; Relativity. Incompleteness. Uncertainty.; Six degrees of self-similarity
February 2005: Crocheted Manifold; "Blood, math and gore."; More about "Numb3rs"; Terror Network Theory
January 2005: Ant Geometry; The Magic of Math, in Queens; Father of fractals

2004

December 2004: IT and the Riemann Hypothesis; Gödel's Theorem on ABC News; Making wavelets in the art world
November 2004: Math in a fly's eye; Tradition vs. Modernity; Topology and the Aharonov-Bohm effect; Solve the equation, get the job
October 2004: Mandelbrot and the Market; Math and the Gypsy Moth; Musings on the Math Olympiad; More on the 5th posulate
September 2004: The Math of Medical Marriages; Bird Logic; Calculus, the play
July/August 2004: Mathematical Origami; Local Boy Makes Good?; Mind, Music and Math
June 2004: The Pythagorean Theorem of Baseball; DNA does the twist; Understanding the ununderstandable
May 2004: More about Kepler's Problem; Math is hard!; Recent math history in the Chronicle; Inside gifted brains; The Bayesian revolution; Chaos in Nature
April 2004: Atiyah, Singer in The Boston Globe; Math Ed in Britain; Statistical Topology of Networks
March 2004: Google salutes Julia; Perelman in Nature; Groupoids and the leech heart; Love Model Equations
February 2004: Aromatic Möbius strip; Perelman in the Baltimore Sun; "Malignant Maths"; Bayesian athletics; Bayesian filters for spam
January 2004: Archimedes Combinatorist; Michael in India; Calculators vs. math skills; Largest prime yet; Mathe-musical instrument

2003

December 2003: Everything and More; The Most Important Problem; Who invented the electronic digital computer?; Far East Math Flap; Hilbert Hotel Onstage; Auxin and the Fibonacci Numbers
November 2003: Why math books are hot; At home in dodecahedral space; Math on the golf course
October 2003: Infinite Wisdom; Wolfram in Washington; African Institute; Paul Wolfowitz, "former mathematician"
September 2003: 15 milliseconds of fame; Women at the EDGE; Death and the heptagon; A heap of trouble; "Please Pile on the Problems? This Has to Be Math Camp"
July/August 2003: New York State Regents Math Flap; "Pure Math - Pure Joy"; Gravitational caustics; Where do we do math?; Beyond Buckyballs
June 2003: Math in Nature; Imaginary numbers in The Observer; The Golden Mean in The New York Times; The Poincaré Conjecture (cont.); Dog bites math
May 2003: The Poincaré Conjecture; Coot Math; Wolfram at the Cooper-Hewitt; "The Superformula"
April 2003: This doughnut universe; Knots in the Washington Post; Anthrax: the math
March 2003: 4 log 3 - a new cosmic constant?; Ethnomath in the Times Magazine; Math reform in Russia; Quantum computing in The Economist
February 2003: Splits at Clay; Gödel in Science; "Math's Wild and Crazy Guy"; Figure Skating; Mathematical oncology; Democracy and despotism
January 2003: The Putnam in Time; Too much pi?; The best ways to lace; Freak waves

2002

December 2002: Locust neuron math; The topology of NOT; Elevens and nines on NPR; Computational Biology in Nature
November 2002: Football math; A mathematical phase transition; Ig Noble math; The next big thing; Bust to boom at Rochester
October 2002: Perfect Graphs; Algorithmic Architecture; Home on the Fractal Range; Ants vote for Wolfram; Neurons do Math; More primes in the Times
September 2002: The fifty-micron Möbius strip; Baby Math on NPR; Solving an Escher Puzzle; Primes in the Times; Post-mortem on the Geometry Center; 143-Year-Old Problem
July/August 2002: The number line is real; Stephen Wolfram and the New York Times; Math in the USSR; A tough math problem in internet routing
June 2002: Moving with VIGRE; A new kind of science?; Math teachers with no math; New / old math probes the big bang; A differential equation for organism growth; Trig tables in verse
May 2002: "Computers, Paradoxes and the Foundations of Mathematics"; Flies, weeds and statistical mechanics; The Erdös Prizes; Nash sightings; DNA Computer solves a hard problem; Poincaré conjecture on NPR, and in the Times; Sidewalk math on NPR
April 2002: "Hi-IQ Math Hunks heat up films, plays"; Spinning eggs; Cellular automata at the seashore; Math plagiarism; More about Nash
March 2002: More backstage math; "Highly enjoyable and interesting people"; Math on 42nd street; Fourier transform of the fossil record; Large-scale sign error; "The Shape of the Universe: Ten Possibilities"
February 2002: Polyhedron Man; The Differential Equations of Pathogen Virulence; More about John Nash; Dynamic Catastrophe Theory
January 2002: A beautiful movie; Tiny computer factors 15; "Knot Possible"; A mathematician backstage; Waves of measles

2001

December 2001: Living and breathing fractals; More about hats; Biomolecular finite-state automata; A new Proof; Mathematica - the show
November 2001: Chinese characters; Evolution's mathematical rhythm; Haven't we had this conversation before?; Multiplication in the brain; Catastrophes in Nature; Drunk on fractals
October 2001: The Gordian unknot; Answering an Age-Old Cry: When Will I Use This Math?; The Abel prize; Photo Solitons
September 2001: Math Anxiety and Math Competence; What is Math about?; Tying and untying molecular knots; Wiles at the Olympiad; Is pi normal?
July/August 2001: Poor Richard's Magic Squares; Two Tony's for Proof; "I prove a theorem and the house expands ..."; ex on the Op-Ed page; Geometric Quantum Computation; "Surprisingly Square"; John Nash, and the movie
June 2001: Computing an Organism; Proof on NPR; Flat and Flatter; Why don't we have six limbs?; Complexity too simple?; Newton vs. Leibniz on the air; Physiological rhythms; Beyond the spherical cow
May 2001: What color is my hat?; Schools' "New Math" = Trouble for City Kids; Fun with Fermat; Alan Alda, math wannabe; Pulitzer for Proof; Benjamin Peirce in The New Yorker; "A Beautiful Mind" - the movie
April 2001: Math in The Lancet; Solitons in matter; Teenager finds new triangle theorem; God, Stephen Wolfram, etc.; Calculus with Mother Hen
March 2001: Unknotting the unknot; Knots on the air; Iannis Xenakis; Jock Math I; Jock Math II; Chaos? Complexity?
February 2001: Rereading Plimpton 322; "Loving Math Infinitely"; How do fish swim?; Digital Archimedes; Math teachers are nerds ... not; Math and Fiction. Incompatible careers?
January 2001: Race to settle Catalan conjecture; Prez mentions math; "Rhetoric and the Math Melodrama"; "Beautiful Minds"; Method and madness

2000

December 2000: That was the election that was; Fermat's Last Tango; Recognition for mathematics; The butterfly effect?; Math history on the web; 31 Prime, 35 Past Prime?; The exhibit Art and Mathematics 2000
November 2000: The tiniest dodecahedron; Strange attractors onstage; Incompressible is incomprehensible; A new Federal encryption algorithm; The geometry of a fender-bender
October 2000: Online Math Quiz October 17; Computation with 2-dimensional DNA; More math into biology!; Math genes?; Slime-mould topology; Retinal Calculus
September 2000: Updating Ramanujan; Making RNA think; 5 + 2 = yellow; Contentious disciples; A Figure-8 knot in a protein; Math in Los Angeles
July/August 2000: Roach Applied Math; Pinning down the Butterfly; The Joy of Sharing
June 2000: Math on Broadway; Honeybee Calculus and Analytic Geometry; Euler's Spinning Penny
May 2000: $1,000,000 revisited; Heinous math?; "The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem"; "Flexible Math Meets a Parental Rebellion"
April 2000: Double Bubbles; More Monkey Math; Squeeze in a few more?; How to win $1,000,000
March 2000: Pebbles to Microchips; Beyond Quadratic Reciprocity; Theory of Liquid Spikes
February 2000: Math Snow Sculpture Wins Prize at Breckenridge; Bubbles can sink in stout; More on Parrando's Paradox; "DNA Computer is created and does Complex Calculations"; More Chimp Math?; "The Curl of Agnesi"
January 2000: Microscopic predators and prey; Heads you lose, tails you lose; Math + Art = Dada; Bees know best

1999

December 1999: The most influential lecture ever given in mathematics?; Why does a negative times a negative equal a positive?; Things that go bump
November 1999: The crumpling catastrophe; How to slice a tort?; Beautiful dynamics
October 1999: "Systematic enumeration of crystalline networks"; Unexpected behavior from fractal drums; Fermat's Last Theorem; No room on the family tree; "Randomness Everywhere"
July/August 1999: Jackson Pollock's drip paintings; Fractals in the family room; Your cell phone may soon have a fractal antenna; Randomly ravenous rabbits?; "Connections between music and science are subtle and uncertain"; "Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics"
June 1999: Written in stone; "Mathematical genius Kurt Gödel"; Unreadable but irresistible; "For math whizzes, victory equals respect"; "Brain's Math Machine Traced to 2 Circuits"; Math on the Web in MathML soon?
May 1999: The music of the spheres; Learn inference and logical rigor from a computer game?; Ada and the Bernoulli Numbers; Plot of Internet traffic against time gives a curve with the self-similarity of a fractal!
April 1999: Space could be finite; "Playful thinking can often lead to serious mathematics"; "Alan Turing's Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science"; "Why does the telephone cord always get twisted?"; A Knotty Mathematical Problem?; "Math Emerges Blinking Into the Glare of Popular Culture"; The Lagrangian Codes; The math of slime molds and ant bridges
March 1999: Snow Sculpting with Mathematics; A faster Web from group theory?; Real-world applications; Unknots that can't be untied; Symmetric singular sextic surface

1998

1998: "Mathematics is ... the fuel that NASA increasingly uses..."; "The Penultimate Conjecture," by Leonard Michaels; "A Multifractal Walk down Wall Street"; "Once upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories"; "Mathematical Recreations" of Ian Stewart; André Weil; "The Geometry of the Universe"; Peter Griffin, author of "The Theory of Blackjack"; Japanese Temple Geometry

1997

1997: Interview with Ennio DeGiorgi; The Proof program on Fermat's Last Theorem on PBS; The Bible Code; Mathematics and the "Science Wars"; AMS adopts stand on new immigration law; Beyond Numbers, a travelling museum exhibition about mathematics; Dr. Neal Lane, Director of the National Science Foundation; Breaking the Code to air on PBS; Paul Erdős dies at 83

Media Coverage of Math

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Books, plays, movies and television shows

Math in the Media includes links to reviews of current books, plays, movies and tv shows about mathematics and mathematicians, aimed at a broad audience. Also, browse the archive of Reviews with lists and links to reviews.

American Mathematical Society