Scientists recently announced progress on an elusive problem from 1960 known as the Sunflower Conjecture. While it doesn’t involve any plant biology, it does deal with objects called “mathematical ...

The artificial intelligence company DeepMind is delving into pure math. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

It’s an educated guess, not a proof. But a good conjecture will guide math forward, pointing the way into the mathematical unknown. Mountain climbing is a beloved metaphor for mathematical research.

A research team based in China says its artificial intelligence system has done something no AI has publicly done before: ...