Receive emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Symmetry also has an aesthetic meaning, although this is ...

We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does that really mean? Intuitively we have a sense of symmetry as a kind of mirroring. Suppose we draw a vertical line through the middle of a ...

The 2008 Abel Prize was awarded to John Griggs Thompson of the University of Florida and Jacques Tits of the Collège de France for their contributions to group theory, the mathematical field that ...

There's a part of the brain that enables us to perceive magnitude -- we can compare loudness when hearing different tones or compare the number of dots in a group at a glance. Neuroscientists have ...

Symmetry in mathematics occurs not only in geometry, but also in other branches of mathematics. It is actually the same as invariance: the property that something does not change under a set of ...

Early in the morning during festivals, many Indian homes wake up to patterns forming quietly at the doorstep. White powder falls in steady lines. Dots appear fi ...

This lavishly illustrated book provides a hands-on, step-by-step introduction to the intriguing mathematics of symmetry. Instead of breaking up patterns into blocks--a sort of potato-stamp ...

To begin to understand what mathematicians and physicists see in the abstract structures of symmetries, let’s start with a familiar shape. We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does ...

Breakthroughs in physics sometimes require an assist from the field of mathematics—and vice versa. In 1912, Albert Einstein, then a 33-year-old theoretical physicist at the Eidgenössische Technische ...

Presidency University's Department of Mathematics hosted Symmetry '25, drawing nearly 260 participants for a day of lectures, contests, and cultural exchange. The festival featured talks by Professor ...