The Great Math Mystery

NOVA leads viewers on a mathematical mystery tour - a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy and the spiral in the center of a sunflower. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. But where does math get its power? Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists and engineers, follows math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond, all leading to the ultimate riddle: Is math an invention or a discovery? Humankind's clever trick or the language of the universe?

Related Links
The Story of Maths

A Mathematical Mystery Tour (BBC Horizon)

This is a 1984 BBC documentary looking at the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics including Fermat's Last Theorem (since solved), Goldbach's conjecture, The Riemann hypothesis, and the P=NP Problem. Featuring interviews with many modern mathematicians, this documentary also looks at the history of maths and some of if it's major players from Euclid to Bertrand Russell.

Related Links:
The Story of Maths