A Brief History Of Mathematics

Complete Series

By: Marcus du Sautoy

Narrated by: Marcus du Sautoy

This ten-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science.

He explores the relationship between Newton and Leibniz, the men behind the calculus; looks at how the mathematics that Euler invented 200 years ago paved the way for the internet and discovers how Fourier transformed our understanding of heat, light and sound. In addition, he finds out how Galois' mathematics describes the particles that make up our universe, how Gaussian distribution underpins modern medicine, and how Riemann's maths helped Einstein with his theory of relativity. Finally, he introduces Cantor, who discovered infinite numbers; Poincaré, whose work gave rise to chaos theory; G.H. Hardy, whose work inspired the millions of codes that help to keep the internet safe, and Nicolas Bourbaki, the mathematician who never was.

The BBC Radio 4 series looking at the people who shaped modern mathematics, written and presented by Marcus du Sautoy.

Short & Sweet!

Brief summaries of past giants in mathematics, and examples of their works and its importance in the sciences.

The shoulders of mathematicians

Excellent narration. A quick understanding of mathematicians after Newton but before the second world war. Around Germany, Britain, and France. Plus India.

Wonderful

I loved the topic have always loved math, quite I defeating to learn of the men that created it. Wish there was another series.

The simplicity in which the author explains advanced concepts that our entire world are built upon makes this book top tier

From the beginnings of calculus to the applications of really large prime numbers in modern cryptography, this book gives — as the title implies — a very brief, high-level history of mathematics since the *discovery* of calculus. It pulled together scattered concepts I recall learning in undergrad and placed them all nicely in a timeline and eloquently built upon each one for the reader (listener) to understand how prior discoveries influenced the next generations of mathematicians to produce their own groundbreaking insights.

The simplicity in which the author explains advanced concepts that our entire world are built upon makes this book top tier.

Just give it a listen!

If you want to fall in love without math this is the book. Personally I plan on releasing to it again. Only problem being there should be a video accompanying it but I don’t think it takes much away from just how interesting math is. The narrator did a fantastic job and definitely keeps the story intriguing and I didn’t think i could say this about a book on math but I almost listened to it in one sitting because of how it stays interesting.