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A square, who works as a lawyer in the two-dimensional world of Flatland, sits down with his hexagonal grandson: Taking nine squares,...

It is a well-known fact of humanity that the chances of a group of people electing to do something decent and necessary is inversely...

Everybody needs love, but for some the striving after it so dominates their every action and decision that it becomes impossible to ever...

In the 1750s, when France was foundering scientifically in the Cartesian shallows, it took Émilie du Châtelet’s French translation of...

In popular mythology, the 1687 publication of Newton’s Principia was the culminating moment when one human told the world how the...

It is a thousand years ago. Europe is a stumbling, superstition-addled giant, depleting its energies on visions of holy violence and...

‘Well, some go this way, some go that way. But as for me, myself, personally, I prefer the short-cut.’ – The Cheshire Cat Every morning...

Mark your calendars! The third book in my Trailblazers of Women in STEM series for Pen & Sword Books, A History of Women in Mathematics,...

The life of Catherine de Parthenay (1554–1631) was dominated by national religious conflict and her decision to take a pivotal role of...

In a small but soon-to-be-revered town in Southern Italy, 2,500 years ago, a group of men and women gathered, united by the proposition...

Of all the realms of mathematics, there are few where more people feel more at home than in the safe harbours of algebra. From the age of...

There’s a lot to like about plain old, everyday space. No matter where you are, there’s always a way to get to where you need to go, and...

‘Momentum is always conserved, except when it isn’t.’ In secondary school physics, we learn all manner of conservation laws, one at a...

By attempting everything, Dorothy Wrinch ended up accomplishing nothing. For half a century, this was the standard final verdict on the...

If you have been reading this series over the years, you’re used to a particular narrative sequence: (1) Brilliant woman researcher...

Our concept of living in a universe with a knowable and predictable future has taken two stunning blows in the last century, first from...

Whereas few European scientists escaped the politico-intellectual gnash of the 1930s unscathed, arguably none faced quite the looming...

When you first walk into secondary school your first year and plop yourself nervously into a desk in the back of your geometry class...

Beholding a bar of metal, it seems an object almost primal in its simplicity. Solid, reliable, the stuff of which cities are made. Peek...

When Grace Chisholm, at age 28, married the mathematician William Henry Young, she had every prospect of a brilliant career before her....