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 ...

A type of symmetry so unusual that it was called a “pariah” turns out to have deep connections to number theory. In 1892, the mathematician Otto Hölder posed a question that would occupy the field for ...

Symmetry attracts us. Studies comparing people’s reactions to different faces have shown, for example, that they find highly symmetrical faces more attractive than less symmetrical faces. The symmetry ...