Department of Mathematics

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place?

tomwt — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:34:25 +0000

Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? tomwt Wed, 03/04/2026 - 15:34 More CNAS in the Media Natalie Wolchover | Quanta Magazine March 04, 2026

QUANTA MAGAZINE - I’ve spent a long time exploring the crystalline beauty of traditional mathematics, but now I’m feeling an urge to study something slightly more earthy,” John Baez wrote on his blog in 2011. An influential mathematical physicist who splits his time between the University of California, Riverside and the University of Edinburgh, Baez had grown increasingly concerned about the state of the planet, and he thought mathematicians could do something about it.

Baez called for the development of new mathematics — he called it “green” math — to better capture the workings of Earth’s biosphere and climate. For his part, he sought to apply category theory, a highly abstract branch of math in which he is an expert, to modeling the natural world.

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John Baez

See how fractals forever changed math and science

tomwt — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:41:24 +0000

See how fractals forever changed math and science tomwt Wed, 08/20/2025 - 08:41 More CNAS in the Media Stephen Ornes | Science News Magazine August 19, 2025

SCIENCE NEWS - ifty years ago, “fractal” was born.

In a 1975 book, the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot coined the term to describe a family of rough, fragmented shapes that fall outside the boundaries of conventional geometry. Mathematicians had been describing these types of shapes since the late 19th century. But by giving them a name — derived from fractus, Latin for “broken” — Mandelbrot gave fractals value. He introduced a way to measure and analyze them. With a name, he recognized order in complexity.

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Fractal-like structures even appear in the body. “If you don’t have a fractal network of blood vessels, we would probably die every second, every time our heart beats, because it’s a very powerful pump,” says Michel Lapidus, a mathematician at the University of California, Riverside and editor in chief of the Journal of Fractal Geometry. A branching structure, he says, both slows the flow and gets the blood where it needs to go. Fractal-like forms also appear in cancer cells and the lungs.

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A tale of Tinder wins the day at the 10th annual UC Grad Slam

tomwt — Fri, 09 May 2025 15:34:41 +0000

A tale of Tinder wins the day at the 10th annual UC Grad Slam tomwt Fri, 05/09/2025 - 08:34 More College News Apollonia Morrill | UC Newsroom May 08, 2025

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Students

Understanding bacteria’s metabolism could improve biofuel production

ilseu — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:28:41 +0000

Understanding bacteria’s metabolism could improve biofuel production ilseu Mon, 12/07/2020 - 08:28 More CNAS in the Media Staff | Green Car Congress December 04, 2020

GREEN CAR CONGRESS - Researchers at UC Riverside and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have used mathematical and computational modeling, artificial intelligence algorithms and experiments showing that bacteria have failsafe mechanisms preventing them from producing too many metabolic intermediates.

Metabolic intermediates are the chemicals that couple each reaction to one another in metabolism. Key to these control mechanisms are enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions involved in biological functions such as growth and energy production. The insight could lead to organisms that are more efficient at converting plants into biofuels. The open-access study appears in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

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Department of Mathematics