The Story of Maths (2008)
WMV3 4765 kbps | 672x544, 25 fps | WMA, 44 kHz, 129 kbps | English | 3:51:00 | 1,6 Gb
WMV3 4765 kbps | 672x544, 25 fps | WMA, 44 kHz, 129 kbps | English | 3:51:00 | 1,6 Gb
The Story of Maths is a four-part series about the history of mathematics, presented by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy.. The series was a co-production between the Open University and the BBC and aired in October 2008 on BBC Four.
In this landmark series of films for BBC FOUR, Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, escorts viewers through the history of this most important of all intellectual disciplines. In a journey that takes him through the ages and around the world, he examines the development of key mathematical ideas and shows how, in a multitude of surprising ways, mathematical ideas underpin the science, technology, and culture that shape our world. Chapters:
In this opening programme Marcus du Sautoy looks at how fundamental mathematics is to our lives before exploring the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece.
In Egypt he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, the Egyptians’ unusual method of multiplication and division, and their understanding of binary numbers, fractions, and solids such as the pyramid.
He discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system - so it is thanks to the Babylonians that we have 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour - and shows how the Babylonians used quadratic equations to measure their land.
In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a tool for counting into the analytical subject we know today.
A controversial figure, Pythagoras’ teachings were considered suspect and his followers seen as a bizarre sect. Legend has it that one of his followers, Hippasus, was drowned when he announced his discovery of irrational numbers - a discovery that upset those who had held faith with the Pythagorean world view.
In Egypt he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, the Egyptians’ unusual method of multiplication and division, and their understanding of binary numbers, fractions, and solids such as the pyramid.
He discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system - so it is thanks to the Babylonians that we have 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour - and shows how the Babylonians used quadratic equations to measure their land.
In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a tool for counting into the analytical subject we know today.
A controversial figure, Pythagoras’ teachings were considered suspect and his followers seen as a bizarre sect. Legend has it that one of his followers, Hippasus, was drowned when he announced his discovery of irrational numbers - a discovery that upset those who had held faith with the Pythagorean world view.
In the second leg of his journey, Marcus du Sautoy visits China and explores how mathematics helped build imperial China and was at the heart of such amazing feats of engineering as the Great Wall. Here, he discovers the first use of a decimal place number system; the ancient Chinese fascination with patterns in numbers and the development of an early version of Sudoku; and their belief in the mystical powers of numbers, which still exists today.
Marcus also learns how mathematics played a role in managing how the Emperor slept his way through the imperial harem to ensure the most favourable succession - and how internet cryptography encodes numbers using a branch of mathematics that has its origins in ancient Chinese work on equations.
In India he discovers how the symbol for the number zero was invented - one of the great landmarks in the development of mathematics. He also examines Indian mathematicians’ understanding of the new concepts of infinity and negative numbers, and their invention of trigonometry.
Next, he examines mathematical developments in the Middle East, looking at the invention of the new language of algebra, and the evolution of a solution to cubic equations. This leg of his journey ends in Italy, where he examines the spread of Eastern knowledge to the West through mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonacci, creator of the Fibonacci Sequence.
Marcus also learns how mathematics played a role in managing how the Emperor slept his way through the imperial harem to ensure the most favourable succession - and how internet cryptography encodes numbers using a branch of mathematics that has its origins in ancient Chinese work on equations.
In India he discovers how the symbol for the number zero was invented - one of the great landmarks in the development of mathematics. He also examines Indian mathematicians’ understanding of the new concepts of infinity and negative numbers, and their invention of trigonometry.
Next, he examines mathematical developments in the Middle East, looking at the invention of the new language of algebra, and the evolution of a solution to cubic equations. This leg of his journey ends in Italy, where he examines the spread of Eastern knowledge to the West through mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonacci, creator of the Fibonacci Sequence.
In this episode, Marcus du Sautoy visits France to look at the work of René Descartes, an outstanding mathematician and theoretical physicist as well as one of the great philosophers, who realised that it was possible to link algebra and geometry. Also examines the amazing properties of prime numbers discovered by Pierre Fermat, whose famous Last Theorem would puzzle mathematicians for more than 350 years. He shows how one of Fermat’s theorems is now the basis for the codes that protect credit card transactions on the internet.
In England he looks at Isaac Newton’s development of calculus, a great breakthrough which is crucial to understanding the behaviour of moving objects and is used today by every engineer. He also goes in search of mathematical greats such as Leonard Euler, the father of topology or ‘bendy geometry’ and Carl Friedrich Gauss, who at the age of 24 was responsible for inventing modular arithmetic (a new way of handling equations).
Gauss made major breakthroughs in our understanding of how prime numbers are distributed. This made a crucial contribution to the work of Bernhard Riemann, who developed important theories on prime numbers and had important insights into the properties of objects, which he saw as manifolds that could exist in multi-dimensional space.
In England he looks at Isaac Newton’s development of calculus, a great breakthrough which is crucial to understanding the behaviour of moving objects and is used today by every engineer. He also goes in search of mathematical greats such as Leonard Euler, the father of topology or ‘bendy geometry’ and Carl Friedrich Gauss, who at the age of 24 was responsible for inventing modular arithmetic (a new way of handling equations).
Gauss made major breakthroughs in our understanding of how prime numbers are distributed. This made a crucial contribution to the work of Bernhard Riemann, who developed important theories on prime numbers and had important insights into the properties of objects, which he saw as manifolds that could exist in multi-dimensional space.
In the las episode Marcus du Sautoy concludes his investigation into the history of mathematics with a look at some of the great unsolved problems that confronted mathematicians in the 20th century. After exploring Georg Cantor's work on infinity and Henri Poincare's work on chaos theory, he looks at how mathematics was itself thrown into chaos by the discoveries of Kurt Godel, who showed that the unknowable is an integral part of maths, and Paul Cohen, who established that there were several different sorts of mathematics in which conflicting answers to the same question were possible.
He concludes his journey by considering the great unsolved problems of mathematics today, including the Riemann Hypothesis, a conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers. A million dollar prize and a place in the history books await anyone who can prove Riemann's theorem.
He concludes his journey by considering the great unsolved problems of mathematics today, including the Riemann Hypothesis, a conjecture about the distribution of prime numbers. A million dollar prize and a place in the history books await anyone who can prove Riemann's theorem.
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