IN a recent number of NATURE (June 30) there appeared a review of a book by G. Mannoury on the philosophy of mathematics, and the reviewer emphasised a statement of the author to the effect that the ...

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. This is one of the basic principles of Euclidean geometry. But we live on a spherical Earth, so we cannot travel the straight line path ...

All human beings may have the ability to understand elementary geometry, independently of their culture or their level of education. In a spherical universe, researchers found that Amazonian Indians ...

Geometry may be one of the oldest branches of mathematics, but it’s much more than a theoretical subject. It’s part of our everyday lives, says Professor Jennifer Taback, and key to understanding many ...

Virtual reality can take you to some far-out places — mountaintops, distant cities and even fantastical game worlds. A team of artists and mathematicians is now adding to that list: universes where ...

Riemannian geometry provides the essential framework for analysing curved spaces by endowing manifolds with a smoothly varying metric. This field has enabled statisticians to extend classical ...