Quanta’s Most Popular Math Stories of 2023

Marvelous modular forms; Upended conjectures; Hidden structure revealed

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser NUMBER THEORY | ALL TOPICS   Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture By MAX G. LEVY Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall. Read the article COMBINATORICS   Surprise Computer Science Proof Stuns Mathematicians By LEILA SLOMAN Two computer scientists have found a new, dramatically lower limit to the maximum size of a set of integers in which no three of them are evenly spaced. Read the article NUMBER THEORY   Behold Modular Forms, the 'Fifth Fundamental Operation' of Math By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ Modular forms are one of the most beautiful and mysterious categories of objects known to mathematicians. But what exactly are they? Read the explainer   TOPOLOGY   An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated By KEVIN HARTNETT The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that the conjecture has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded. Read the article COMBINATORICS   Mathematicians Find Hidden Structure in a Common Type of Space. By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ In 50 years of searching, mathematicians found only one example of a "subspace design" that fit their criteria. A new proof reveals that there are infinitely more examples out there. Read the article Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2023 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation