This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Julia Robinson was born on December 8, 1919.

Weekend Edition's own "Math Guy" Keith Devlin calls the late Martin Gardner the greatest "math guy" of all time. As Devlin tells NPR's Scott Simon, Gardner had little formal mathematics training. And ...

Math has long been a bane to American students. One way to counteract the difficulty is to discover the subject’s playful side. Manil Suri, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland who is ...

Math isn’t just assignments and deadlines – it can be playful, creative and enjoyable as a puzzle or a game. That’s the spirit of what University of Virginia School of Data Science master’s student ...

In recreational mathematics, the balance scale is an endless source of puzzles that require precise and elaborate logic and teach the fundamentals of generalization. Balance-scale puzzles abound in ...

In what would be his centennial year, Martin Gardner, the longtime author of Scientific American's celebrated Mathematical Games column, continues to inspire mathematicians and puzzle lovers Like a ...