A better understanding of human smell is emerging as scientists interrogate its fundamental elements: the odor molecules that enter your nose and the individual neurons that translate them into perception in your brain. @yaseminsap reports: quantamagazine.org/how-smell-guid…

Applications are now open for the AWM Graduate Student Poster Session that will be held at JMM 2026. Graduate students of all genders may apply. For more info go to awm-math.org/meetings/awm-j…. Apply here: mathprograms.org/db/programs/17…. #AWM #JMM2026 #JMM #WomenInMath #STEM

👃How do these scent molecules translate into a neural language that triggers emotions and memories?  5/5 quantamagazine.org/how-smell-guid…

In 360 BCE, Plato envisioned the cosmos as an arrangement of five geometric shapes: flat-sided solids called polyhedra. Millennia later, mysteries still surround even the simplest of those shapes — the tetrahedron, which has just four triangular faces. quantamagazine.org/a-new-pyramid-…

Three Oxford Mathematicians have won 2025 London Mathematical Society London Mathematical Society Prizes. Left to right, Nigel Hitchin wins the De Morgan Medal, Helen Byrne the Naylor Prize and Lectureship in Applied Mathematics and Vidit Nanda a Whitehead Prize. maths.ox.ac.uk/node/72373

Gold, silver, and platinum — along with other heavy elements — come from stars. How? “People like to do DNA tests to see where their ancestors came from. We’re doing the same with our planet and solar system.” —Artemis Spyrou, nuclear astrophysicist quantamagazine.org/physicists-sta…

Did color exist in deep time? quantamagazine.org/when-did-natur…

Fireflies “have been doing computer science well before we even existed.” — Andrew Moiseff, a biologist at the University of Connecticut quantamagazine.org/how-do-firefli…

Skates are flat like a pancake but evolved from ancient sharklike creatures. Biologists have shown that the rays got their shape not from a simple gene mutation, but from a change to the 3D architecture of its genome. Viviane Callier 柯蔚文 reports: quantamagazine.org/how-3d-changes…

Today, the Tour de France begins three gruelling weeks of sun, scenery & summits, but what's the key to winning in this elite world of small margins? How about appetite for risk? Ian Griffiths, Industrial Mathematics Group & Javi are leading the breakaway. Read more: maths.ox.ac.uk/node/72427 #TourDeFrance2025

A team of mathematicians just built the first “monostable” tetrahedron. Someday, it might help inform the design of a self-righting spacecraft. quantamagazine.org/a-new-pyramid-…

In a recent paper, the physicists Mason Kamb (left) and Surya Ganguli found that the creativity in diffusion models is a consequence of their architecture. quantamagazine.org/researchers-un…

In a basement in Michigan, a group of physicists is blasting heavy metal. Which is to say that they are using a particle accelerator to understand the nuclear synthesis of elements heavier than iron. quantamagazine.org/physicists-sta…

In the late 19th century, the French neuroanatomist Paul Broca defined humans as “anosmatique,” or “non-smelling.” Since then, smell has gotten a bad rap as our least important sense. quantamagazine.org/how-smell-guid…

Here’s what you see when you watch lightning form with a radio telescope: quantamagazine.org/radio-telescop…

Since she was in graduate school, Laura Monk has been developing mathematical theories that Maryam Mirzakhani didn’t have a chance to finish before her death. Monk feels she’s gotten to know the mathematician through her proofs. quantamagazine.org/years-after-th…

As a massive star ages, a process called neutron capture fuses heavier and heavier elements from the star's free-floating subatomic particles. quantamagazine.org/physicists-sta…

The brain tags certain experiences worth remembering by sending out a burst of high frequency “sharp wave ripples''. This electrical activity is “like a fireworks show in the brain,” said Wannan Yang, a doctoral student at New York University. quantamagazine.org/electric-rippl…

If light has a certain wavelength, you will describe what you are seeing as red. If a sound is a certain frequency, you will hear an F sharp. But what does a pineapple smell like? “This smells like a pineapple,” said smell expert Thomas Hummel. quantamagazine.org/how-smell-guid…

A few years ago, Krisztina Regős (left) and Robert Dawson helped discover new properties of tetrahedra. Recently, a team of mathematicians used their work to build a particularly strange tetrahedron that can only sit on one of its faces. quantamagazine.org/a-new-pyramid-…