To Infinity and Beyond
Marcus du Sautoy concludes his look at the history of mathematics by examining the great unsolved problems that confronted mathematicians in the 20th century.
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.
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Clips
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The continuum hypothesis
Duration: 02:41
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Cantor and the mathematics of infinity
Duration: 03:06
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The bridges of Konigsberg - topology
Duration: 03:41
Credits
Role | Contributor |
---|---|
Presenter | Marcus du Sautoy |
Producer | David Berry |
Director | David Berry |
Series Producer | Kim Duke |
Broadcasts
- Mon 27 Oct 2008 21:00
- Tue 28 Oct 2008 00:30
- Tue 28 Oct 2008 03:30
- Sun 2 Nov 2008 19:00
- Mon 3 Nov 2008 03:40
- Sat 15 Aug 2009 19:30
- Sun 16 Aug 2009 03:05
- Mon 20 Sep 2010 19:30
- Tue 21 Sep 2010 02:35
- Tue 2 Aug 2011 20:00
- Wed 3 Aug 2011 01:30
- Mon 9 Apr 2012 19:30
- Tue 10 Apr 2012 01:00
- Mon 8 May 2017 00:20
- Mon 5 Feb 2018 00:45