THIS “Introduction to Vector-methods and their Various Applications to Physics and Mathematics” is an exposition of the late Willard Gibbs' vector analysis. The author in his preface warns us that “no ...

Mathematics is full of weird number systems that most people have never heard of and would have trouble even conceptualizing. But rational numbers are familiar. They’re the counting numbers and the ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...

In one of David Lodge's comic novels about academia, the English-professor characters play a game called "Humiliation," where they take turns admitting classic works of literature that they haven't ...

Symplectic geometry is a relatively new field with implications for much of modern mathematics. Here’s what it’s all about. In the early 1800s, William Rowan Hamilton discovered a new kind of ...