This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Julia Robinson was born on December 8, 1919.

Math has long been a bane to American students. One way to counteract the difficulty is to discover the subject’s playful side. In this excerpt, a math professor reflects on recreational math and the ...

For many philosophers not automatically inclined to Platonism, the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects has provided the best (and perhaps only) evidence for ...

Recreational math may sound like an oxymoron, but it is David Nacin’s guiding principle. Nacin is a former college deejay, yoga devotee and a 14-year mathematics professor at William Paterson ...

Math has long been a bane to American students. One way to counteract the difficulty is to discover the subject’s playful side. Manil Suri, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland who is ...