When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. The Harvard graduate student in physics was fascinated by the beautiful and ...

The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have ...

Patterning and periodic structures are very important in physics. This led to a tremendous amount of work on learning what shapes can tile an area or fill a volume. It was found that these shapes must ...

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman. This year’s Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Roger Penrose, Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for their ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that’s covered with tiny squares? It’s the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a “periodic tiling of space”, with shapes covering an ...

Geometry in Western art predominantly involves space and proportion. But in other cultures, most notably Islamic, Chinese and Japanese, artistic geometry flowered most conspicuously in flat patterns, ...