For four decades, a quiet boundary in pure mathematics kept a powerful theorem locked inside the safe world of finite quantities. Now a new result known as Sebestyen’s theorem has pushed that boundary ...

GEOMETERS are wont to speak (it seems to me) somewhat laxly of “the line at infinity” as if there were only one such line in a plane; in a certain but not in the most obvious sense this is true—viz.

For centuries, the concept of infinity has captivated mathematicians and philosophers alike, stretching far beyond the simple idea of endless counting. Recent groundbreaking discoveries, however, have ...