Rachel Crowell

1 month ago | scientificamerican.com | Rachel Crowell |Violet Frances

When most people think of shapes, they imagine a triangle, a rectangle, or maybe even a fancier- sounding rhombus or trapezoid. But to mathematicians, shapes encompass a vast universe of surprising forms, from one-dimensional loops to polytopes (geometric objects with flat sides that can exist in any desired dimension). A related category, surfaces—collections of points that form boundaries in 3D space—includes an entire zoo of striking, strange mathematical objects.

1 month ago | nature.com | Rachel Crowell

This Nature Q&A series celebrates people who fight racism in science and who champion inclusion. It also highlights initiatives that could be applied to other scientific workplaces. Inclusion — not gatekeeping — is a theme in mathematician Nathan Alexander’s laboratory at Howard University in Washington DC. His quantitative-histories workshop is a computational and community hub for studying social problems, such as housing insecurity and homelessness.

2 months ago | scientificamerican.com | Rachel Crowell

Mathematicians sometimes think of their research as a garden and unsolved problems as seeds waiting to sprout. Some problems are analogous to tulip bulbs. As mathematicians work to solve them, they may appear stagnant and stuck underground, leaving onlookers questioning whether they will ever produce a dazzling result. If they eventually grow into flowers, however, their glow brings the whole garden to life. Other unsolved mathematical mysteries are akin to the branches of trees.

2 months ago | snexplores.org | Lakshmi Chandrasekaran |Silke Schmidt |Rachel Crowell |Stephen Ornes

Free educator resources are available for this article. Register to access: Client key* E-mail Address* Already Registered? Enter your e-mail address above. Does math leave you anxious? Maybe you feel it’s unforgiving — that unless everything is perfectly right, it’s totally wrong.

Oct 8, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Rachel Crowell

After German mathematician Gerd Faltings proved the Mordell conjecture in 1983, he was awarded the Fields Medal, often described as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.” The conjecture describes the set of conditions under which a polynomial equation in two variables (such as x2 + y4 = 4) is guaranteed to have only a finite number of solutions that can be written as a fraction. Faltings’s proof answered a question that had been open since the early 1900s.