Marta Macho-Stadler

A team at Google DeepMind has developed AlphaProof, an artificial intelligence system that learns to find formal proofs by training on millions of self-formulated problems. According to the authors, the system “substantially improves upon previous-generation results on historical problems from mathematical competitions.” Specifically, in the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) for secondary school students, “this performance, achieved after several days of computation, resulted in a score equivalent to that of a silver medalist, marking the first time an AI system has achieved medal-level performance.” The results are published in the journal Nature.

A study evaluating the mathematical and linguistic performance of first- and second-year primary school students in France—more than 2.6 million children between 2018 and 2022—shows that the gender gap in mathematics appears within a few months of starting primary school. This gap increases with years of schooling, not with age, adds the research published in Nature.

This year's theme for 8M is "For an inclusive digital world: innovation and technology for gender equality". If we want to innovate for everyone, there must be women doing research in mathematics, an essential discipline in the fields of technology, finance and health. However, the future of mathematical research in Spain has a male profile and this is worrying: advances and major decisions will be made excluding half of the population.

Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska was today awarded one of four Fields Medals, considered the Nobel Prize in mathematics. After Iran's Maryam Mirzakhan, who received it in 2014, she is the second woman to be honoured with this prestigious award.