BBC Podcasts: A Brief History of Mathematics

Published by patrick honner on

This is a set of ten podcasts from the BBC titled “A Brief History of Mathematics“:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/maths

Narrated by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, these podcasts begin with Newton, Leibniz, and Calculus, and cover other great personalities in mathematics like Euler, Fourier, Ramanujan, Poincare, and, of course, Gauss.

Each podcast is about 15 minutes in length, and all 10 are freely available for download.


patrick honner

Math teacher in Brooklyn, New York

3 Comments

John Sharp (Sliceforms) · May 21, 2012 at 9:57 am

There is a wider range of discussions of mathematics, including history, in the podcasts from the BBC programme “In our time” at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/science.
The programme covers many interesting subjects discussed by a range of knowledgeable people so you need to browse through the list. The first page has Archimedes but for example there discussions of Fibonacci, symmetry and a particularly good one on Babylonian mathematics

MrHonner · May 21, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Thanks, John! I was not familiar with the “In Our Time” series, but it looks great! Thanks for sharing.

Robert L. Tuva (@rltuva) · May 24, 2012 at 1:08 am

This was a great listen. Thank you for linking.

I’m probably not alone in this, noticing a funny least-common denominator of these pioneers. Nearly everyone, after coming out with his breakthrough, was severely criticized by his peers. His mentor even. Well, ex-mentor. Rash degrading things were said in public, friendships ended. Time thankfully is on the side of genuine.

Leave a Reply to Robert L. Tuva (@rltuva) Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *