History and Culture
History of mathematics and cultural connections
Mathematics all around: awards for creators
Many writers, artists and game designers, whether professional or amateur, incorporate a mathematical dimension into their work. Every year, the Tangente Awards honor some of them.
Historical math challenges: the Renaissance | Tangente
Throughout history, one of the driving forces behind mathematical research has been intellectual battles fought through challenges. Some of them have remained famous.
Solving problems—and winning prizes
A great many competitions, most of them aimed at school students, involve solving problems. Some are international, national, regional or local; contestants may take part individually, in groups or as whole classes. What they all share is a desire to motivate young people to engage with mathematics.
Yesterday's conjectures, today's progress | Tangente
Egyptian fractions, like Einstein's relativity, provide the subject matter for conjectures that have only just been proved. The strange abc conjecture, simple to state, has just been resolved... if the proof put forward by Mochizuki turns out to be correct.
Euler's correspondence with his contemporaries | Tangente
Leonhard Euler maintained an extensive network of correspondents across Enlightenment Europe. His exchanges with Christian Goldbach, of particular interest for number theory, have just been published.
Tao solves Erdős's discrepancy conjecture | Tangente
Terence Tao is one of the great "problem posers" of his time, since a photograph that went around the world shows him, at ten years old, already at work with the famous Hungarian mathematician.
Sophie Germain stamp: first look at the design | Tangente
A woman at the IHP!
Conjecture, conjecture... something will always come of it
Conjectures are especially famous when they have simple statements and resist mathematicians’ efforts for a long time. They give mathematics an air of mystery and bring great renown to those who solve them, but above all to those who first formulated them, such as Fermat and Goldbach.
Of machines and men: Catalan and Mihailescu | Tangente
Little stories about conjectures.
The engine of mathematics
Mathematical progress owes much to conjectures, large and small, that challenge mathematicians. This was true long before Landon Clay and others offered million-dollar prizes: conjectures are the engine of mathematics.
Tangente Book Prize 2015: results & winners | Tangente
The jury has delivered its verdict. It awarded the Tangente Book Prize to Vincent Borrelli and Jean-Luc Rullière, and also gave a special mention to two great ladies, Stella Baruk and Évelyne Barbin.
John von Neumann: means and excess
The Banach–Tarski paradox claims that, in theory, the pieces of a single loaf can be turned into two loaves. It fell to the protean genius John von Neumann to explain the underlying reason for this mathematical miracle. The notion of amenability that he introduced then spread widely.
Plausible conjectures… that turn out to be false!
We often assume that the only mistakes good mathematicians make are trivial slips caused by momentary inattention, such as errors in simple calculations. Yet some have put forward mathematical conjectures that proved false—sometimes spectacularly so.
Maryam Mirzakhani
Maryam Mirzakhani's recognition in Seoul in 2014 was a landmark: for the first time, mathematics' most prestigious award went to a woman—an Iranian woman, no less. Can we explain her work on surfaces to our readers? This article attempts to rise to the challenge.