We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a ...

The 2008 Abel Prize was awarded to John Griggs Thompson of the University of Florida and Jacques Tits of the Collège de France for their contributions to group theory, the mathematical field that ...

Reflective symmetry is when a shape can be folded in half, with either side of the fold being a mirror image of the other. Rotational symmetry is when a shape can be rotated and it still looks the ...

This jingle has helped generations of algebra students recall the quadratic formula that solves every equation of the form $latex ax^2+bx+c=0$. The formula is as ...

For more than 50 years, mathematicians have been searching for a rigorous way to prove that an unusually strong symmetry is universal across physical systems at the mysterious juncture where they’re ...

Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Carolyn Yackel, SB'92, flipped through photos of ...

There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...

Physicists have put a new twist on the humble corkscrew. Just as a butterfly appears identical to its mirror image, objects made of structures that tilt, twist or spiral possess a symmetry now ...