Christopher Havens came upon his love of math while in solitary confinement. A decade later, he published a paper on number theory in a top mathematics journal.
Australian mathematician Akshay Venkatesh honoured in this year’s Fields Medals.
I was in second year at the University of Western Australia when Akshay Venkatesh skipped first year maths and jumped straight into my classes. He was 13 at the time. Now he’s won a prestigious award.
Dev Patel plays Ramanujan (right) with Jeremy Iron’s as his Cambridge mentor G H Hardy (left) in The Man Who Knew Infinity.
Icon Films
Srinivasa Ramanujan was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the 20th century. His story is told in the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity, screening tonight in selected cinemas in Australia.
In recent weeks, two truly major results have been announced in the realm of (analytic) number theory, namely the mathematics of integers in general and of prime numbers in particular. Number theory, as…
Sending secure information? You could do a lot worse than employing the RSA algorithm.
Seq
A couple of days ago on The Conversation, I set myself up with a task: to defend the usefulness of so-called “useless” maths. Today, that defence continues, with a look at the RSA algorithm. I finished…
As all mathematicians know, the rift between useful and useless can change with time.
Manu gomi
I once made the mistake of asking a mathematician why he devoted his whole life to maths. “Because it’s fun!” he replied wildly, his flabby cheeks beaming with childlike excitement. “Ah, of course,” I…