Knot theory began as an attempt to understand the fundamental makeup of the universe. In 1867, when scientists were eagerly trying to figure out what could possibly account for all the different kinds ...

You may not have heard of knot theory. But take it from Bill Menasco, a knot theorist of 35 years: This field of mathematics, rich in aesthetic beauty and intellectual challenges, has come a long way ...

Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge. In the fall of 2021, Malors Espinosa set out to devise ...

Consider the plight of a gardener struggling with a recalcitrant tangle of garden hose. Sometimes, no amount of pulling or twisting unsnarls the coils. At other times, the tangles readily come apart, ...

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 ...

Color-changing fibers are helping scientists to understand, for the first time, the exact ways some knots hold tighter than others. In 2018, researchers developed pressure-sensitive fibers in part to ...

During her graduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin, Lisa Piccirillo solved a problem that had bedeviled mathematicians for five decades. Piccirillo first learned of the Conway Knot ...