The Isaac Newton Institute: Creating eureka moments

When you let go of the notions of distance, area, and angles, all you are left with is holes.

Pure mathematics has a habit of eventually becoming useful. This series of articles explores an example: the rise of category theory in physics and the quest to build quantum computers.

Category theory, which has previously been described as "abstract nonsense" turns out to be just the language we need to describe materials that may help us build quantum computers. Find out more in this article.

The quantum Hall effect is a curious phenomenon: not only does it make effects from quantum physics visible in the macroscopic world, it also links physics to the pure mathematical area of topology. Find out more in this article.

What does water feeding to ice have to do with symmetry? This article provides an answer and begins to tell the astonishing story of how theory once denounced as "abstract nonsense" may help us build quantum computers.

The mathematics of the future needs more specialist maths teachers, stronger university provision, and sustained research funding.

A digital heart might sound like science fiction, but these personalised mathematical descriptions of patients' hearts are already being put to the test.

How confident is the Large Language Model chatbot that its answers are correct? And how confident can we be about this confidence? This article investigates.