When computer scientists hang out at cocktail parties, they're apt to chat, among other things, about the single most important unsolved problem in computer science: the question, Does P = NP?

Last year, 18 percent of Stanford University seniors graduated with a degree in computer science, more than double the proportion of just a decade earlier. Over the same period at MIT, that rate went ...

From powering search engines to securing data and optimizing networks, algorithms underpin nearly every aspect of modern technology. Understanding how efficiently they can solve problems — and where ...

When the Clay Mathematics Institute put individual $1-million prize bounties on seven unsolved mathematical problems, they may have undervalued one entry—by a lot. If mathematicians were to resolve, ...

Avi Wigderson is the first recipient of both a Turing Award and an Abel Prize, math's top honor. Andrea Kane / Institute for Advanced Study The 2023 Turing Award—the computing world’s Nobel Prize ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

Imagine a world where artificial intelligence not only understands language but creates with it, where quantum systems no longer feel like an enigma but a solvable puzzle. It might sound like science ...

Robert Hazen and Michael Wong discuss their bold proposal for a new law of nature, centered around the idea that information is as fundamental to the cosmos as mass, energy or charge. Most organic ...