When Ed Scheinerman's 7-year-old granddaughter asked the question that every mathematician secretly loves—"What is the number before infinity?"—he knew he was onto something. "You're not going to like ...

Discover how the concepts of zero and infinity revolutionized mathematics. Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions.

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...