BUFFALO, N.Y. — 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 ...

Find a string. Really. Do it. Now twist, tie and tangle it as much as you like. Finally, attach the two loose ends of your string together to make a closed loop. (This is a crucial step.) What you ...

Knot theory, a branch of topology, examines the intricate properties of closed curves embedded in three-dimensional space. At its core is the study of knot invariants—quantitative measures that remain ...

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 ...

Sometimes, a simple, even childish question turns out to be connected to the deepest secrets of the universe. Here’s one: How many different ways can you tie your shoelaces? Mathematicians have been ...

Providence, RI--- In the 19th century, Lord Kelvin made the inspired guess that elements are knots in the "ether". Hydrogen would be one kind of knot, oxygen a different kind of knot---and so forth ...

Just as sat-nav did away with the need to argue over the best route home, scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a new method to find the optimal routes for future space missions ...

Knot theory, a vibrant branch of topology, investigates the properties of knots viewed as embeddings of circles in three-dimensional space. Central to this field are knot invariants—algebraic or ...