Erica Klarreich

I always enjoy @ericaklarreich.bsky.social’s math pieces. This is what a Noperthedron looks like:

First Shape Found That Can’t Pass Through Itself | Quanta Magazine After more than three centuries, a geometry problem that originated with a royal bet has been solved.

In August, two mathematicians found a shape that puts an end to a centuries-old geometric mystery. @ericaklarreich.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...

First Shape Found That Can’t Pass Through Itself | Quanta Magazine After more than three centuries, a geometry problem that originated with a royal bet has been solved.

My latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social is about a geometry problem devised more than three centuries ago by King Charles I's nephew, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, leader of the Royalist forces in the English Civil War.
www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...

Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies | Quanta Magazine An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.

A new paper has forced a reckoning on cryptographers by showing how to harness a widely used proof technique to "prove" lies -- my latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/computer-sci...

Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies | Quanta Magazine An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.

An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes. @ericaklarreich.bsky.social reports:
www.quantamagazine.org/computer-sci...

How Bees, Beer Cans and Data Solve the Same Packing Problem (Gift Article) Trying to fit it all in? There’s a trick to it, even in 24 dimensions.

Dear #mathsky, if you repost this, it will let people see the article for free. Thanks!

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove | Quanta Magazine A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions.

Some dimensions are weirder than others! In a new proof, mathematicians have shown that a certain kind of strangely twisted shape can exist only in dimensions 2, 6, 14, 30, 62 and 126. My latest for Quanta Magazine: www.quantamagazine.org/dimension-12...

Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove | Quanta Magazine A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions.

A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions. @ericaklarreich.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/dimension-12...

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture | Quanta Magazine In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program.

Dennis Gaitsgory just won the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in mathematics; here's my deep dive from last year into his masterwork: www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-p...

Wrote an illustrated guide to what life was like before the Affordable Care Act. Spoiler: it was bad.

Read the whole thing here: aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/it-could-b...

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

There are days in life that shake you.

I’m shattered 💔 to share that I just found out that the US Government terminated my 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (~$2 million), threatening my long-promised assistant professor job at Columbia University
& academic career... 1/🧵

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

If you’re a federal employee—current or recently laid off—Slate Plus is free for six months. Thousands of federal employees are facing job cuts—or working under growing uncertainty. Slate is offering them six months of Slate Plus for free.

Slate is offering free Slate Plus access to federal employees who lose their jobs. Here's how to sign up. @slate.bsky.social has lots of relevant career advice, money advice, smart news coverage & entertaining distractions from all the chaos and cruelty. slate.com/fed-plus

navy blue background with white text that says "3 days until we stand up for science"

On Friday, we Stand Up for Science in locations Nationwide (& internationally!) to support science as a public good that benefits everyone.

Join us! Visit www.standupforscience2025.org for more information & other ways to get involved ☀️

The American Mathematical Society has also started a page to coordinate support for professional mathematics, so far focusing on executive orders impacting the National Science Foundation: www.ams.org/government/g...

I hope this action is not forgotten. It will be a small thing in the tsunami of very bad things, but is symptomatic of so much. And I simply can't see that it is in any way the result of enforcement. This is the sort of anticipatory obedience that happens in authoritarian regimes.

In case you're in the mood for some good news today, I'm excited to announce @quantabooks.bsky.social, our new imprint at @simonsfoundation.org partnering with the amazing team at @fsgbooks.bsky.social. Learn more at www.quantabooks.org and send us your book queries!

In 2017, I wrote about how the center of gravity for math and science research moved from Germany to the United States under the Nazis and how public funding of science research allowed the US to remain the center of many fields after the war. That is under threat now.
undark.org/2017/02/01/m...

Rational or Not? This Basic Math Question Took Decades to Answer. | Quanta Magazine It’s surprisingly difficult to prove one of the most basic properties of a number: whether it can be written as a fraction. A broad new method can help settle this ancient question.

"A proof that Riemann missed" -- my latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social addresses an age-old question: which numbers are irrational?
www.quantamagazine.org/rational-or-...

Tom, thank you! Working with you was a wonderful experience.

I'm also here and will be posting about my math stories as they come out

Big Advance on Simple-Sounding Math Problem Was a Century in the Making | Quanta Magazine A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture.

Hector Pasten didn't want to write an exam for his students, so he procrastinated by thinking about a nearly century-old problem about prime factors--and solved it! My latest for
@quantamagazine.bsky.social #MathSky
www.quantamagazine.org/big-advance-...

Perplexing the Web, One Probability Puzzle at a Time | Quanta Magazine The mathematician Daniel Litt has driven social media users to distraction with a series of simple-seeming but counterintuitive probability puzzles.

If you haven't encountered @littmath.bsky.social's probability puzzles on the other site, here's your chance to! My latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social #MathSky
www.quantamagazine.org/perplexing-t...

Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture | Quanta Magazine In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program.

In a "crowning achievement," mathematicians have proved a major part of the profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program -- my latest for
@quantamagazine.bsky.social #MathSky www.quantamagazine.org/monumental-p...

Merging Fields, Mathematicians Go the Distance on Old Problem | Quanta Magazine Mathematicians have illuminated what sets of points can look like if the distances between them are all whole numbers.

Mathematicians have made the first substantial progress in 80 years on understanding points in the plane that are integer distances apart -- my latest for @quantamagazine.bsky.social
#MathSky

Algorithmic Advance: The Group Isomorphism Problem Exploring a potential way to immensely speed up algorithms for the group isomorphism problem.

A Chicago computer scientist has made the first substantial progress in 50 years on a fundamental question in algebra: how to recognize when two groups are the same. My latest for @CACMmag: cacm.acm.org/magazines/20...

A New Generation of Mathematicians Pushes Prime Number Barriers | Quanta Magazine New work attacks a long-standing barrier to understanding how prime numbers are distributed.

Mathematicians are "breathing new life into analytic number theory" by understanding how quickly buckets full of prime numbers start to even out -- my latest for
@quantamagazine.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-genera...