The Story of Maths To infinity and beyond
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. Written and presented by Marcus Du Sautoy ; Produced & directed by David Berry.
Primary Title
- The Story of Maths
Secondary Title
- To infinity and beyond
Date Broadcast
- Monday 2 February 2009
Start Time
- 16 : 10
Finish Time
- 17 : 00
Duration
- 50:00
Episode
- 4
Channel
- TV One
Broadcaster
- Television New Zealand
Programme Description
- 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. Written and presented by Marcus Du Sautoy ; Produced & directed by David Berry.
Classification
- Unknown
Owning Collection
- Television Vault
Broadcast Platform
- Television
Languages
- English
Captions
Live Broadcast
- No
Rights Statement
- Made for the University of Auckland's educational use as permitted by the Screenrights Licensing Agreement.
Subjects
- Educational
- Mathematics--History.
Genres
- Documentary
- Educational
- History
Hosts
- Marcus Du Sautoy (Host)
Contributors
- Marcus Du Sautoy (Writer)
- David Berry (Producer)
- David Berry (Director)
- The Open University (Production Unit)
Subjects
- Educational
- Mathematics--History.