History

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.

This is a collection of interview clips with mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

https://www.webofstories.com/story/search?q=mathematician&max=10&p=1&sp=mandelbrot&ch

The interview is broken up into different topics like the Hausdorff Dimension, economics and mathematics, fixed points, and the birth of fractals.  In addition, Mandelbrot talks about his personal, academic, and professional life.  It’s an interesting window into a profoundly important person.

The website WebOfStories.com also offers clips of interviews of other scientists, like phsicists Murrary Gell-Mann and Freeman Dyson and Biologist Francis Crick.

This is a short and engaging portrait of John Conway, one of the world’s most recognized mathematicians.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2012/03/01/30161/

Conway is decidedly eccentric, which is not uncommon in the world of mathematics.  He loves magic, juggling, and games, and has something of a a reputation as an odd chap.   But his mathematical contributions are numerous and substantial:  Conway’s Game of Life in and of itself is a remarkable mathematical construction, but he is also credited with inventing (or discovering?) surreal numbers.  Conway has also contributed to the theory of sphere packing.

The article above, from the Daily Princetonian, is a quick and lively read, a fun portrait of a brilliant and curious man.

This is an engaging, accessible, and surprisingly moving documentary about Andrew Wiles and his lifelong pursuit of Fermat’s Last Theorem:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8269328330690408516

Although the mathematics of the proof could not possibly be explained to the layperson (there aren’t many people in the world who could really understand it in its entirety), this BBC documentary does a great job of narrating the struggles, setbacks, and triumphs of Wiles’ pursuit.

The story of the hero and the many peripheral characters (including John Conway) opens a wonderful window into the world of advanced mathematics.