Yet another is as a completely enclosed space, such as an air pocket in Swiss cheese. A topologist would say that all but the first example are holes. But to understand why – and why mathematicians ...

Back in 1970, a young physicist working in the Soviet Union made a counterintutive prediction. Vitaly Efimov, now at the University of Washington in the US, showed that quantum objects that cannot ...

People who have a casual interest in mathematics may get the idea that a topologist is a mathematical playboy who spends his time making Möbius bands and other diverting topological models.

A topologist walks into a cafe: — Can I have a doughnut of coffee, please? This is a joke written by the Soviet-American mathematician Tanya Khovanova, who lectures in mathematics at the Massachusetts ...

Math students this side of Central Square just found one more reason to be excited: Michael J. Hopkins, an MIT professor of mathematics specializing in algebraic topology will join the Faculty of ...

But Andrew Lipson is a very special kind of topologist: In his world, everything is made of little plastic bricks. Lipson, 42, studied at Cambridge, where he received an undergrad degree in math ...

“It feels like the entire universe is within a sphere that is maybe within a couple meters’ radius,” says topologist Henry Segerman at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He is ...

“But if you are a topologist there is only one thing that is really interesting with these things. This thing (the bun) has no holes, the bagel has one hole, the pretzel has two holes. "The ...

“It feels like the entire universe is within a sphere that is maybe within a couple metres’ radius,” says topologist Henry Segerman at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He is ...