Tag: Mathematics

  • Science & Tech

    Medieval Islamic architecture presages 20th century mathematics

    Intricate decorative tilework found in medieval architecture across the Islamic world appears to exhibit advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry – a concept discovered by Western mathematicians and physicists only in the 1970s and 1980s. If so, medieval Islamic application of this geometry would predate Western mastery by at least half a millennium.

    3–4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    AMS awards Veblen Prize to Harvard professor

    The American Mathematical Society (AMS) awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry last month to William Casper Graustein Professor of Mathematics Peter Kronheimer (along with his collaborator Tomasz Mrowka of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Given every three years, the Veblen Prize is one of the field’s highest honors for work in geometry or topology.

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Three HSPH professors honored at Joint Statistical Meetings

    Each year, awards are given at the annual Joint Statistical Meetings. During this year’s meeting in Seattle, held Aug. 6-10, three Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) faculty members were honored: Professor of Biostatistics Xihong Lin; Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Biostatistics Louise Ryan; and Marvin Zelen, professor of statistical science in the HSPH Department…

    3–4 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Yau travels down the road less taken

    Horng-Tzer Yau’s affinity for mathematics was obvious in high school, where, in his native Taiwan, he began studying advanced calculus and college algebra. He developed an interest in physics at…

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    ‘Armored’ bubbles can exist in stable nonspherical shapes

    Researchers at Harvard University have demonstrated that gas bubbles can exist in stable non-spherical shapes without the application of external force. The micron- to millimeter-scale peapod-, doughnut-, and sausage-shaped bubbles,…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Born to add

    In experiments, 5-year-olds, who had no real experience using number symbols, “added” two arrays of dots and compared them to a third array. When researchers replaced the third array of…

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    They are born to add

    How does someone who hasn’t learned to count yet, say a preschooler, deal with numbers? Adults are comfortable with symbols like “10” to signify 10 balloons, beeps, or beliefs. But…

    1–2 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Fryer brings mathematical economics to stubborn racial issues

    Roland G. Fryer Jr. is a brave man. An economist and self-described math geek, Fryer plunges fearlessly into the roiling waters of racial inequality, often surfacing with findings that contradict…

    1–2 minutes
  • Science & Tech

    Harvard undergraduate discovers novel atomic cluster

    Eighteen-year-old Kevin Chan, a member of the Harvard College Class of 2004, used a supercomputer to discover a novel arrangement of atoms that had been missed by other scientists studying…

    1–2 minutes
  • Health

    Simulating disease trends with massive mathematical models

    Researcher Karen Kuntz is currently developing a model to evaluate trends in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality. Nearly 50,000 Americans die each year from the disease, despite the fact that…

    1–2 minutes
  • Health

    Using statistics to understand genes

    Professor Jun Liu studies repetitive patterns in the DNA that lies between genes. This material contains instructions for regulating the expression of genes, and it is involved in whether the…

    1–2 minutes