“There are five fundamental operations in mathematics,” the German mathematician Martin Eichler supposedly said. “Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and modular forms.” Part of the joke, ...

Using “refreshingly old” tools, mathematicians resolved a 50-year-old conjecture about how to categorize important functions called modular forms, with consequences for number theory and theoretical ...

You can see it in the logarithmic whorl of a nautilus. The milky iridescence of an abalone. The spiked turret of a queen conch. Precision, elegance, strength. The seashell is a consonance of form and ...