There is no shortage of popular books and lectures on math—but they can only teach us so much. Mathematics has long been presented as a sanctuary from confusion and doubt, a place to go in search of ...

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat scribbled a note on a textbook margin that would baffle mathematicians for more than three centuries. And that’s all he wrote. Fermat died before supplying the missing proof ...

Michael Freedman’s momentous 1981 proof of the four-dimensional Poincaré conjecture was on the verge of being lost. The editors of a new book are trying to save it. One of the most important pieces of ...

Every mathematician has a story that goes something like this. You’re at a party, and someone asks what you do for a living. “I’m a mathematician,” you say. “You must be a genius!” they reply. Or ...

The [Math Sorcerer] loves books. His latest acquisition is the famous Real and Complex Analysis, which is a very stout math book. How stout? Well, there are several chapters on holomorphic functions, ...