As a high school student in the mid-1990s, Pace Nielsen encountered a mathematical question that he’s still struggling with to this day. But he doesn’t feel bad: The problem that captivated him, ...

Imagine a number made up of a vast string of ones: 1111111…111. Specifically, 136,279,841 ones in a row. If we stacked up that many sheets of paper, the resulting tower would stretch into the ...

For millennia, mathematicians have wondered whether odd perfect numbers exist, establishing an extraordinary list of restrictions for the hypothetical objects in the process. Insight on this question ...