+Resource blog
Louis' top 10 Quanta Magazine articles of 2025
For those who enjoy reading maths news and explainers (among other topics including physics, biology and computer science), Quanta Magazine doesn't disappoint. When it came time to write my contribution for Mathateca's Best of the Web 2025, I ended up with a top ten list of Quanta articles I enjoyed this year: enough for it's own blog post! Without further ado, here are my highlights.
‘Reverse Mathematics’ Illuminates Why Hard Problems Are Hard
https://www.quantamagazine.org/reverse-mathematics-illuminates-why-hard-problems-are-hard-20251201/
Do you ever feel like some mathematical concepts are secretly the same?
This article explores an interesting area of metamathematics and gives a nice accessible example.
Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math
Do you like big numbers?
This article promises and delivers big numbers.
A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-cell-so-minimal-that-it-challenges-definitions-of-life-20251124/
Here I discover how personal this list is, because arguing about what counts as being alive is my happy place.
That said I am pretty sure anyone should find this interesting.
What Are Lie Groups?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-are-lie-groups-20251203/
First things first, Lie is pronounced "Lee" and until I read this article I did suspect that Lie groups were mostly used to catch out students who skipped lectures and relied on textbooks.
Secondly, and more seriously, this article gives a tidy explanation of Lie groups and why they are important.
For Algorithms, a Little Memory Outweighs a Lot of Time
https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-algorithms-a-little-memory-outweighs-a-lot-of-time-20250521/
Of all the articles here I feel this one might have the most real world application because I think how much space you have to work in can drastically change the time to perform tasks.
The actual draw here is a nice history of the development of complexity theory, which it turns out has emerged in a linear time process (time).
‘Ten Martini’ Proof Uses Number Theory To Explain Quantum Fractals
This article contains a graph that will be very familiar to anyone who has read Gödel, Escher, Bach.
I recommend this article because it contains a nice bit of biography for Douglas Hofstadter and a example of recursion.
And a nice reminder that sometimes following a weird tangent passed the point where your colleges start fighting you can still pay off (also see Barbara McClintock).
What is a Manifold?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-manifold-20251103/
This is what I consider an ideal Quanta article, because it covers a topic succinctly, clearly and has one graphic that neatly demonstrates the subject.
I had had genuinely misunderstood what manifolds were before reading this, thanks Quanta.
What Is the Fourier Transform?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-fourier-transform-20250903/
This article probably has the strongest endorsement of any here, because I sent someone a link to it and then they felt like they understood the gist of what Fourier Transforms were.
It is probably for the best I didn't send them to https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-02-01.
This one is pretty basic if you are in the loop.
The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-largest-sofa-you-can-move-around-a-corner-20250214/
I feel embarrassed bringing this one up because I feel like everyone heard about this.
But this is a solid quanta article, it covers the problem, the solution, and the human history of the problem.
Self-Assembly Gets Automated in Reverse of ‘Game of Life’
https://www.quantamagazine.org/self-assembly-gets-automated-in-reverse-of-game-of-life-20250910/
Another article clearly written for me, I love the game of life and cellular automata.
This article will be interesting to anyone interested in the applications of cellular automata beyond procedural generation, as exemplified by Rule 30.
