Discover how the concepts of zero and infinity revolutionized mathematics. Zero and infinity. These seemingly opposite, obvious, and indispensable concepts are relatively recent human inventions.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...

Several years ago, I tried to explain infinity to a class of fifth graders. In the story that I told them, I was preparing to eat a piece of cake when a friend walked in on me. Being polite, I gave ...