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Randomness is surprisingly hard to define. Fortunately the mathematical language we use to describe it is beautifully well defined.

The second guiding principle in probability theory is more subtle – universality.

Symmetry is one of the two guiding principles in understanding probabilities – if different outcomes are equivalent they should have the same probability.

We talk to pioneering mathematician Stephen Cook, who came up with the concept of NP-complete problems, about his work, computer science, and artificial intelligence.

Want to understand chaos? Then have a look at this famous brainchild of the mathematician Stephen Smale.

Young researchers at this year's Heidelberg Laureate Forum tell us about their work.

What's wrong with this probability argument?

Here we present a worked example of a distributed system in action, to illustrate Leslie Lamport's rules of ordering history using logical clocks.

Leslie Lamport explains how he used logical clocks to set history straight in distributed systems.

Leslie Lamport explains how an understanding of special relativity helped him realise how to order events in computer science, and enabled the development of distributed computing.

My view of the events taking place on my computer is very different to how a computer scientist, a engineer or a physicist would view what is happening inside the box. Leslie Lamport explains how the definition of an event distinguishes between these areas of research.

Our digital lives rely on distributed computer systems, such as the internet, but understanding the order of events in such systems is not always straightforward.