Mona Lisa’s smile. Mary Lou Retton’s Olympic vault. Mariah Carey’s musical pitch. All are considered perfect. So are the numbers 6 and 28. With feats of artistry and athleticism, perfection lies in ...

For millennia, mathematicians have wondered whether odd perfect numbers exist, establishing an extraordinary list of restrictions for the hypothetical objects in the process. Insight on this question ...

Perfect Numbers Six is such a number: it is the sum of all numbers that divide it except itself. In 2,000 years 12 perfect numbers were found; now a computer has discovered five more ...