There was a time when a zig-zagging line didn't mean two, and a circle didn't mean zero. NPR's Eric Westervelt talks with Amir Aczel about the origins of our numbers and his book, Finding Zero. So ...

Zero is definitively an even number, mathematicians confirm. The formal definition states an even number is any whole number divisible by two with no remainder, a rule zero perfectly satisfies (0 = 2 ...

If we didn’t have zero, then the numbers in the number system wouldn’t go higher than nine. We couldn’t go through life without a zero. If zero wasn’t existent, life would be much different. For ...

When you see repeating number sequences, you may think it's a coincidence. Perhaps it's your favorite number or you have a special memory associated with it. However, this is no coincidence! It's ...

Many mathematical equations can only be solved thanks to a special human invention: the number zero. In many ways, it is a strange concept. It’s a quantity, defined by absence. It also emerged ...

What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than the start of a new year? Zero is a fairly new concept in human history and even more recent as a number. It wasn't until around the 7th ...

Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others, to distinguish numbers ...