For its 225th birthday, our writer Thomas Hodgkinson hails the Royal Institution as proof of the vital importance of science communication.

Let's talk about science

A Bloomberg piece names our Arnold and Landau Fellowships as one of the few programmes offering help to Russian and Ukrainian scientists.

Security and freedom

In a piece in Nautilus, our scientists talk about why they prefer the 1,000-year-old technology of blackboards to their digital equivalents.

The art of blackboards

In a Nature correspondence, our scientists argue that, by the terms of "the Birch test", no AI has yet made a genuine mathematical discovery.

A Birch for AI's back

Professional sport has a lot to teach scientists about pushing the limits of human achievement—so why are we still content to be amateurs?

Science goes pro

A piece in The Times explains how, thanks to our Arnold and Landau Fellowships, mathematicians divided by war can find a common denominator.

The language of maths

In The Spectator, our writer Madeleine Hall hails John Venn, who pioneered not only Venn diagrams but also frequentist probability.

What are the chances?

A century ago, in our rooms in Mayfair, Sir James Dewar died. Our writer Thomas Hodgkinson pays tribute to the inventor of cordite in Nautilus.

The big bang

Our Arnold and Landau Fellowships continue a tradition of contact and collaboration between British and Russian scientists dating back to Newton.

Science without borders

In a letter in The Times, our Director Thomas Fink argues that supporting independent research centres will accelerate discovery for Britain.

Accelerating science

The beautiful game of mathematics, accelerating discovery by seeing patterns among the patterns, deserves a Nobel prize all of its own.

The beautiful game

In the Thunderer column of The Times, Thomas Fink argues that Britain should open its doors to Russia’s top physicists and mathematicians.

Landau lives on

In Nature, the London Institute argues that its five new Research Fellowships for Russian theorists will be a boost for British science.

Boost for British science

Like Orpheus in the Underworld, the London Institute is challenging mortality, says our writer Thomas Hodgkinson in The Sunday Telegraph.

Price of immortality

The Royal Institution supported scientists fleeing 1930s authoritarianism. Now, thanks to our Arnold Fellowships, history repeats itself.

History repeats itself

An AI that can turn mathematics problems written in English into a formal proving language could make them easier for other AIs to solve.

AI helps with maths

History suggests our new posts for physicists and mathematicians from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus will have an enduring impact on UK science.

From Russia with math

The Washington Post explains how man's mad search for immortality is getting serious in our cell programming collaboration with bit.bio.

Death, be not proud

To mark our Webby nomination, we describe the design principles behind our website and how they evolved in tandem with the Institute itself.

Designing web design

Is free will a mathematical problem? How about immortality? Or the quest for AI? The Times reports on our 23 Mathematical Challenges.

Challenging Times

Showing up for work makes organisations more intelligent, because it let’s workers switch between focus and interaction in an unplanned way.

The intelligent organisation

As the government creates its Advanced Research and Invention Agency, it could learn from the exceptional history of the Royal Institution.

Britain’s DARPA

The London Institute has moved into the iconic Royal Institution, where it will expand its programme of curiosity-driven theoretical science.

Move to the Ri

Supporting non-university research institutes with core funding will finally give aspiring researchers an alternative to a university job.

Independent science

In an interview with Thomas Fink, Sir Roger Penrose talks about his Nobel Prize, the beauty of physics—and why AI is nothing to fear.

A singular mind

From Newton to Maxwell to Penrose, Britain has always excelled at theoretical science—so why doesn't the government do more to support it?

The value of theory

Forbes explains how the London Institute, working with the biologists at bit.bio, may revolutionise our understanding of human life.

LIMS-bit.bio

The Times welcomes the collaboration between London Institute mathematicians and the biologists at bit.bio to crack cell reprogramming.

Verdict reports on the collaboration between the London Institute and cell coding company bit.bio to decode the operating system of life.

Maths, meet biology

Basic science—the kind done without consideration of its usefulness—leads to the biggest breakthroughs, which is why we need to protect it.

Back to basic science

Complexity may be hard to unpick, without being inherently bad. Ensure the benefits of any addition to company systems outweigh its costs.

Taming complexity

In today’s Science|Business, the London Institute welcomes the prospect of a UK DARPA and calls for shorter turn-around times for funding.

Taking back research

EU funding favours applied research over basic science, but Brexit is a chance to redress the bias and protect curiosity-driven research.

Basic science after Brexit

More independent research centres would provide an alternative to the university model of research, where teaching is bolted to science.

A new kind of science

British Airways’ inflight magazine runs a three-page profile of the London Institute, its founder and its new approach to doing science.

Sage of discovery

The 3D structures of slurries—fluids full of solid particles—can be swiftly measured using a single 2D shot and electron diffraction data. 

Slurry in a hurry

If you meet a conspiracy theorist, don't bother trying to change their views. Encountering the truth only makes them more pig-headed. 

Whatever you say

In innovation, the most apparently niche ingredients may turn out to be the most useful, as the structures of recipes become more complex.

Yes you cayenne

Following Moore's law, solar power will become ever cheaper as an energy source—and there’s nothing Donald Trump can do about it.

Moore means less

Twitter sentiment during busy periods, such as ahead of quarterly earnings releases, provides some indication if a stock will rise or fall.

A little bird told me

Measures meant to stabilise economies may have the opposite effect, creating cyclical structures in the networks of contracts between banks.

Fools rush in

Quirky and apparently mysterious, innovation is critical to sustained economic growth—and mathematics can help us understand how it works.

Harnessing Serendipity

Architects are designing rotating homes to increase the efficiency of solar power, while its cost is set to keep falling by 10% annually. 

The future’s bright

The cost of solar power will continue to fall by 10% annually, meeting 20% of global energy needs far sooner than has been predicted. 

Here comes the sun

The simultaneous study of news sentiment and browsing behaviour, even on small time-scales, can help to predict stock market fluctuations. 

A stock response

The hunt for networks that best combine efficiency with repairability, to avoid breakdown, leads to structural designs that resemble snowflakes.   

Beauty in repairability

Snowflake-shaped networks, with redundant arms that come into use when main branches break down, are easiest to fix when disaster strikes.

Snowflakes don't break

The Eiffel tower is now a longstanding example of hierarchical design due to its non-trivial internal structure spanning many length scales.