Autore: Amir Alexander

On August 10, 1632, five leading Jesuits convened in a sombre Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a simple idea: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and limitlessly tiny parts. The doctrine …

The surprising history behind a ubiquitous facet of the United States: the gridded landscape. Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Pe …

In the fog of a Paris dawn in 1832, Evariste Galois, the 20-year-old founder of modern algebra, was shot and killed in a duel. That gunshot, suggests Amir Alexander, marked the end of one era in math …