On New Year's Eve, a small company in Canada was among the first to raise the alarm about an infectious disease outbreak. Its computer algorithm calculated where the virus might spread next.

Ada Lovelace has been called the world’s first “computer programmer.” In the 1840s, she wrote the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that existed only on paper.

The first primality tests using randomized algorithms (based on refinements to Fermat’s little theorem) ushered in a new era. Problem after problem turned out to be far easier to solve with randomness ...

Acclaimed as a mathematical genius, Ada Lovelace is said to have understood the potential of the first computer blueprints better than their inventor. A serendipitous friendship with the ...