... that French astrochemist Christine Joblin co-created a webcomic to popularize her research on the origins of cosmic dust? (23.03)
... that after Archimedes first defined convex curves, mathematicians lost interest in their analysis until the 19th century, more than two millennia later? (23.01)
... that ten-sided gaming dice (examples pictured) have kite-shaped faces? (22.11)
... that it took 90 years to replace the "unconvincing" original proof of Roberts's triangle theorem, on the number of triangles formed by systems of lines, with a correct proof? (22.11)
... that circle packings in the form of a Doyle spiral(pictured) were used to model plant growth long before their mathematical investigation by Doyle? (22.10)
... that record-setting airplane spinner Catherine Cavagnaro is also a professional mathematician? (22.01)
... that Jessen's icosahedron(pictured) has been used for both the "Skwish" children's toy and a NASA proposal for a "super ball bot" to cushion space landers on other planets? (22.01)
... that dyadic rationals, fractions based on powers of two, can be easier to work with than other kinds of fractions for both schoolchildren and computers? (21.08)
... that the common depiction of the Borromean rings as three linked but pairwise-unlinked circles (pictured) is an impossible object, because they cannot actually be circular? (21.03)
... that although the Euclidean distance and the Pythagorean theorem are both ancient concepts, the Pythagorean formula for distance was not published until 1731? (20.12)
... that Laura Garwin, one of the first female Rhodes Scholars, left a career in science to become a full-time trumpeter? (20.12)
... that computer science professor Ruth Aylett performed with a robot poet in the Edinburgh Free Fringe? (20.12)
... that unlike their Euclidean equivalents, the ideal regular tetrahedron, octahedron, and dodecahedron can all tile hyperbolic space(pictured)? (20.10)
... that among proofs of the Sylvester–Gallai theorem, Kelly's has been praised as "simply the best", but also criticized as "like using a sledge hammer to crack an almond"? (20.09)
... that Chiara Daraio has used a version of Newton's cradle to create "sound bullets", and walls filled with ball bearings to create one-way barriers for sound? (20.03)
... that former college basketball star Amy Langville is an expert in ranking systems, and has applied her ranking expertise to basketball bracketology? (20.02)
... that after world-record breaststroke swimmer Gordon Warner lost his left leg, he resumed practising the Japanese way of the sword and eventually became the discipline's highest-ranked Westerner? (20.01)
... that J. J. Stiffler's "unparalleled" and "landmark" Theory of Synchronous Communications (1971) sprang from NASA's need for power-efficient synchronization of data transmission for its space probes? (19.09)
... that Pandrosion may have been an earlier female contributor to mathematics than Hypatia? (19.09)
... that according to a study conducted by epidemiologist Xifeng Wu and her colleagues, fifteen minutes of moderate exercise per day can increase lifespan by an average of three years? (19.07)
... that Fields Medal-winning mathematician Klaus Roth performed so poorly on the Mathematical Tripos that his tutor suggested he take "some commercial job with a statistical bias"? (19.05)
... that although the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration(pictured) has been studied since 1879, it was not depicted in its realization as three overlaid heptagrams until 1990? (19.05)
... that photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva won the trust of a Siberian mammoth-tusk hunter by stitching up his injured hand? (18.10)
... that a story by Argentine mathematician Magdalena Mouján about a Basque family that travels back in time to their homeland was blocked by the Franco regime? (18.08)
... that a solar-powered device for extracting water from the air, co-designed by Evelyn Wang, has been compared to the moisture vaporators in Star Wars? (18.08)
... that Hungarian mathematician Márta Svéd earned her Ph.D. at age 75? (18.04)
... that prime numbers have been studied since the time of the ancient Greeks, but had few real-world applications until the invention of public-key cryptography in the 1970s? (18.04)
... that Emily Riehl, former bassist for the band Unstraight, wrote about "unstraightening" in her research as a professional mathematician? (18.03)
... that Mary Nomura, a singer who was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp as an orphaned teenager, became known as the "songbird of Manzanar"? (18.03)
... that Marjorie Hahn, a retired mathematics professor and international senior-level tennis player, approaches tennis games with the same plan that she uses for mathematical proofs? (17.12)
... that a play by Babette Hughes was performed in 1938 by six blind actresses? (17.06)
... that Anne Penfold Street, one of Australia's leading mathematicians, earned bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry before switching to mathematics? (17.05)
... that mathematician Donald G. Saari advocates deciding elections by the Borda count instead of plurality voting, because it leads less often to paradoxical outcomes? (17.05)
... that the website "Six Degrees to Harry Lewis" (Lewis pictured) was a precursor to Facebook? (17.04)
... that erection engineer Mark Barr had a business making rubbers, said bicycles stimulated ball development, and was elected to the screw committee? (17.04)
... that a Bricard octahedron(pictured) can change its shape without changing the shapes of its faces? (17.03)
... that Euclidean space can be completely filled without overlaps by copies of any plesiohedron, a type of convex shape whose known examples have up to 38 sides? (17.03)
... that a 1923 book by Progressive Era activist Kate Claghorn(pictured) has been called "the one significant contemporary study of the immigrant and the American legal system"? (16.07)
... that Margaret Jarman Hagood, a sociologist who wrote a book on Mothers of the South, became a mother herself before completing her bachelor's degree? (16.07)
... that Public Health Reports was established in 1878 to meet the requirements of the National Quarantine Act, which required American consulates abroad to report on epidemic diseases? (15.09)
... that Ioana Dumitriu began taking graduate mathematics courses as a college freshman, and became the first female Putnam Fellow the following year? (15.01)
... that mathematician Andrew Gleason liked to say that proofs "really aren't there to convince you that something is true—they're there to show you why it is true"? (13.04)
... that Pieter Nieuwland(pictured), an 18th-century child prodigy and polymath who died a year after becoming a professor, has been called the Dutch Isaac Newton? (12.09)
... that Nicolas de Bruijn was inspired to prove De Bruijn's theorem on packing bricks into boxes by his seven-year-old son's inability to pack some bricks into a box without wasted space? (12.09)
... that the number of ways to place diagonally symmetric rooks on an chessboard in such a way that no two rooks attack each other is a telephone number? (12.04)
... that the Latvian mathematician Emanuels Grīnbergs lost his job and his doctoral degree for serving in the German Army during World WarII, but then regained both by writing a new thesis? (12.04)
... that despite leaving school at age 14, Thomas Kirkman became one of 19th-century England's leading mathematicians and helped found combinatorial design theory? (11.10)
... that the Malfatti circles, three tangent circles inside a triangle, are named after Malfatti because of an incorrect conjecture he made, and were studied earlier by Ajima and di Cecco? (11.06)
... that Charles Fletcher, the first European settler in what is now Navarro River Redwoods State Park, built an inn in 1865 that remained open until the 1970s? (11.02)
... that an equitable coloring of a graph(pictured), in which the numbers of vertices of each color are as nearly equal as possible, may require far more colors than a graph coloring without this constraint? (09.03)
... that there are 115,200 solutions to the ménage problem of permuting six couples at a twelve-person table so that men and women alternate and are seated away from their partners? (09.01)
...that in graph theory, a pseudoforest can contain trees and pseudotrees, but cannot contain any butterflies, diamonds, handcuffs, or bicycles? (07.10)
...that a cyclic cellular automaton(pictured) is a system of simple mathematical rules that can generate complex patterns mixing random chaos, blocks of color, and spirals? (07.04)