Mathematics

Prof. John Urschel – a former offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens – joined Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s newest show, The Curiosity Desk, to talk about his love of his family, linear algebra, and football. On how he eventually chose math over football, Urschel quips: “Well, I hate to break it to you, I like math better… let me tell you, when I started my PhD at MIT, I just fell in love with the place. I fell in love with this idea of being in this environment [where] everyone loves math, everyone wants to learn. I was just constantly excited every day showing up.”

George Smoot '66, PhD '70, who was honored for his work in cosmology with the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, has died at the age of 80, reports Douglas Scott, Joseph Silk and Tom Broadhurst for Nature. Smoot’s work “contributed to our understanding of the Universe on the largest scales and at the earliest observable times by measuring temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background,” they explain. 

Wall Street Journal reporter Angel Au-Yeung spotlights Anysphere, an AI startup founded by Michael Truell '21, Sualeh Asif '22, Arvid Lunnemar '22, and Aman Sanger '22. “The company makes an AI tool that learns a developer’s coding style to help autocomplete, edit and review lines of code,” writes Au-Yeung. 

Michael Truell '21, Sualeh Asif '22, Arvid Lunnemar '22, and Aman Sanger '22 co-founded Anysphere, an AI startup developing Cursor, an AI coding tool that “allows engineers to use AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI to write and edit entire chunks of code as well as identify and fix bugs,” reports Rashi Shrivastava for Forbes. 

George Smoot '66, PhD '70, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, has died at the age of 80, reports Katrina Miller for The New York Times. Smoot’s work as a physicist “helped elucidate the story of cosmic creation, providing evidence of what he called the primordial seeds that grew into galaxies and galaxy clusters,” writes Miller. 

Prof. Peter Shor speaks with Katia Moskvitch and her nine-year-old son Kai of The Quantum Kid about how quantum technologies could be applied to developing climate change and sustainability solutions. Shor explains that quantum computers can be used for “simulating quantum mechanics, which would really help immensely in designing new materials, and new materials could be very useful for solving the climate crisis.” 

George Smoot '66, PhD '70, the 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, has died at the age of 80, reports Kasha Patel for The Washington Post. Smoot’s work “helped take an image of the universe in its infancy, providing strong support for the Big Bang theory and new insight into the origins of the cosmos,” writes Patel. 

George Smoot '66, PhD '70, a recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work “finding the background radiation that finally pinned down the Big Bang Theory,” has died at age 80, reports the Associated Press. 

In an effort to better understand how protein language models (PLMs) think and better judge their reliability, MIT researchers applied a tool called sparse autoencoders, which can be used to make large language models more interpretable. The findings “may help scientists better understand how PLMs come to certain conclusions and increase researchers’ trust in them," writes Andrea Luis for The Scientist. 

Edwin Chen '08 speaks with Forbes reporter Pheobe Liu about his journey to founding Surge AI, a startup that “helps tech companies get the high-quality data they need to improve their AI models.” 

Forbes reporter Martina Castellanos spotlights Edwin Chen '08, founder of Surge AI, as one of the 10 youngest billionaires on the 2025 Forbes 400 list. After working in machine learning, Chen saw “the lack of quality training data for AI,” and “launched Surge AI in 2020 to fix the problem,” writes Castellanos. 

Researchers at MIT have developed a new tool, called Meschers, that allows users to create detailed computer representations of mathematically impossible objects, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. “In addition to creating aesthetically quirky objects,” Lee explains, “Meschers could eventually assist in research across geometry, thermodynamics, and even art and architecture." 

Prof. Ryan Williams has published a new proof that explores computational complexity and flips the script on years of assumptions about the trade-offs between computation space and time, reports Max Springer for Scientific American. Williams found that “any problem can be transformed into one you can solve by cleverly reusing space, deftly cramming the necessary information into just a square-root number of bits,” Springer explains. “This progress is unbelievable,” says Mahdi Cheraghchi of the University of Michigan. “Before this result, there were problems you could solve in a certain amount of time, but many thought you couldn’t do so with such little space.” 

Prof. John Urschel speaks with Guardian reporter Rich Tenorio about his decision to call an audible and leave his career as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens to focus on his love for math as a student and then a professor at MIT. “I realized I was missing the academic environment,” he says. “I missed talking math with people, learning things, being around other people who like … math-related issues."

“AT MIT innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-earth creativity,” notes Chronicle during a visit to campus to peek behind the scenes at the innovations underway at the Institute. Classes taught by Prof. Erik Demaine are a “mix of rigorous math and creative collaboration,” host Anthony Everett explains, highlighting how Demaine’s work in computational origami has found its way into practical applications in such fields as medicine, architecture and space exploration. “I think origami provides a really powerful tool for making transformable shapes,” Demaine relates.