As a girl in Shanghai, China, Nancy Bjorge kept her fingers busy folding tiny paper boats. The shapes signified ingots, she says, and her grandmother pressed her to produce them by the hundreds.

In 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing came up with an idea for a universal computer. It was a simple device: an infinite strip of tape covered in zeros and ones, together with a machine that ...

Before becoming a physicist, before being the editor in chief of the Journal of Quantum Electronics, before helping NASA design its largest space telescope, Robert Lang learned to fold paper. Already ...