What’s slice? It’s the umbrella term for two properties that this kind of mathematical knot can have. And a mathematical knot is a whole major field of study unto itself, inspired by regular knots ...

“I didn’t allow myself to work on it during the day,” she said, “because I didn’t consider it to be real math. I thought it was, like, my homework.” The question asked whether the Conway knot—a snarl ...

Half a century ago, a brilliant young mathematician named John Horton Conway discovered, of all things, a knot. This wasn’t the sort of knot that you’d be likely to encounter in the real world. You ...

Over 60 years ago, Ralph Fox posed a problem about knots that haunts mathematicians to this day. His question is now often formulated as the “slice-ribbon conjecture,” which posits that two seemingly ...