And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: December 3, 1616, 401 years ago today -- a big day for mathematics ... a very, VERY big day. For that day saw the birth in England of John Wallis, the ...

A set of the six sides of a die matches up one-to-one with a set of red shoes, helping illustrate Georg Cantor's set theorem. Image courtesy of GBH/NOVA It can be easy to take math for granted. But ...

Albert Einstein famously said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe.” The notion of infinity has been pondered by the greatest minds over the ...

NOVA: How do mathematicians define infinity? Netz: Something which is equal to some of its parts. That's really the technical definition. NOVA: Is there a difference between the mathematical concept ...

When mathematician Georg Cantor first glimpsed the true nature of infinity, it changed mathematics forever. He demonstrated that infinity isn’t just endless—it exists in different sizes, each opening ...