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Nearly all life, from bacteria to humans, uses the same genetic code. This code acts as a dictionary, translating genes into the amino acids used to build proteins. The universality of the genetic code indicates a common ancestry among all living organisms and the essential role this code plays in…

I would like to know what a nuclear bomb actually does – Rafael, age 11, Melbourne

Sarah Clegg’s Woman’s Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi is about ancient demonic figures, expressly the infamous child-killing monsters of the Near East and Mediterranean. Intimately tied to childbirth and infant and child mortality, such monsters were female in form.

Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as “savage” and “wild”. Narratives of a “continent without history” and fantasies of European superiority are still told in ethnographic museums, like the Humboldt Forum in Berlin and the Musée du…

On the Swedish island of Björkö lie the remains of Birka, a significant Viking trading post. Birka is studded with burial chambers, stuffed with clues about their occupants – amber, textiles, gold, silver and many other treasures. One particular chamber caught the eye of 19th-century archaeologists, who labelled the grave…

Our cultural touchstones series looks at books that have made an impact.

On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries. Wiles’ announcement caused a sensation, both within the mathematical community and in the media.

Caitlin Long's Custodia Bank will hold 108 percent of customer funds on deposit...if the Federal Reserve will allow it to open.

Mathematician Per Enflo, who solved a huge chunk of the 'invariant subspaces problem' decades ago, may have just finished his work.