Jordana Cepelewicz

1 month ago | pourlascience.fr | Jordana Cepelewicz

Les fourmis, les guêpes, les abeilles et autres insectes dits « sociaux » vivent dans des colonies très organisées, où une multitude de femelles renoncent à la reproduction, pourtant généralement considérée comme la pierre angulaire de la perpétuation de l’espèce, pour être aux petits soins de quelques reines qui, elles, pondent, et de leur progéniture. Quel chemin évolutif a pu conduire à ce mode d’organisation dite « eusociale » ?

Jan 23, 2025 | quantamagazine.org | Solomon Adams |Gregory Barber |Erica Klarreich |Jordana Cepelewicz

Calculus is a powerful mathematical tool. But for hundreds of years after its invention in the 17th century, it stood on a shaky foundation. Its core concepts were rooted in intuition and informal arguments, rather than precise, formal definitions. Two schools of thought emerged in response, according to Michael Barany, a historian of math and science at the University of Edinburgh. French mathematicians were by and large content to keep going.

Jan 15, 2025 | quantamagazine.org | Gregory Barber |Erica Klarreich |Jordana Cepelewicz

Introduction In May of 1694, in a lecture hall at the University of Cambridge, Isaac Newton and the astronomer David Gregory started to contemplate the nature of the stars, only to end up with a math puzzle that would persist for centuries. The details of their conversation were poorly recorded and are possibly apocryphal — it had something to do with how stars of varying sizes would orbit a central sun.

Jan 8, 2025 | quantamagazine.org | Erica Klarreich |Jordana Cepelewicz |Gregory Barber

In June 1978, the organizers of a large mathematics conference in Marseille, France, announced a last-minute addition to the program. During the lunch hour, the mathematician Roger Apéry would present a proof that one of the most famous numbers in mathematics — “zeta of 3,” or ζ(3), as mathematicians write it — could not be expressed as a fraction of two whole numbers. It was what mathematicians call “irrational.”Conference attendees were skeptical.

Nov 11, 2024 | quantamagazine.org | Steven Strogatz |Jordana Cepelewicz

Introduction In August, a pair of mathematicians discovered an exotic, record-breaking curve. In doing so, they tapped into a major open question about one of the oldest and most fundamental kinds of equations in mathematics. Elliptic curves, which date back to at least ancient Greece, are central to many areas of study. They have a rich underlying structure that mathematicians have used to develop powerful techniques and theories.