Indian Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the contribution Indian mathematicians have made to our understanding of the subject. Mathematics from the Indian subcontinent has provided foundations for much of our modern thinking on the subject. They were thought to be the first to use zero as a number. Our modern numerals have their roots there too. And mathematicians in the area that is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were grappling with concepts such as infinity centuries before Europe got to grips with it. There’s even a suggestion that Indian mathematicians discovered Pythagoras’ theorem before Pythagoras. Some of these advances have their basis in early religious texts which describe the geometry necessary for building falcon-shaped altars of precise dimensions. Astronomical calculations used to decide the dates of religious festivals also encouraged these mathematical developments. So how were these advances passed on to the rest of the world? And why was the contribution of mathematicians from this area ignored by Europe for centuries?
Guests
-
George Gheverghese Joseph No other episodes
Honorary Reader in Mathematics Education at Manchester University - Colva Roney-Dougal
11 episodes
Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews -
Dennis Almeida No other episodes
Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Exeter University and the Open University
Related episodes
-
Maths in the Early Islamic World
16 Feb, 2017 510 Mathematics -
Renaissance Maths
2 Jun, 2005 510 Mathematics -
Mathematics and Platonism
11 Jan, 2001 510 Mathematics -
Negative Numbers
9 Mar, 2006 510 Mathematics -
Pythagoras
10 Dec, 2009 510 Mathematics -
Zero
13 May, 2004 510 Mathematics -
Mathematics’ Unintended Consequences
11 Feb, 2010 510 Mathematics -
Calculus
24 Sep, 2009 510 Mathematics -
Imaginary Numbers
23 Sep, 2010 510 Mathematics -
Mathematics
6 May, 1999 510 Mathematics -
al-Biruni
10 Jun, 2010 900 History -
Carl Friedrich Gauss
30 Apr, 2020 510 Mathematics -
Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems
9 Oct, 2008 510 Mathematics -
Archimedes
25 Jan, 2007 510 Mathematics -
Euclid’s Elements
28 Apr, 2016 510 Mathematics -
The Translation Movement
2 Oct, 2008 500 Science -
Emmy Noether
24 Jan, 2019 510 Mathematics -
Mathematics and Music
25 May, 2006 780 Music -
Infinity
23 Oct, 2003 510 Mathematics -
Al-Kindi
28 Jun, 2012 190 Modern Western Philosophy
Programme ID: p0038xb0
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0038xb0
Auto-category: 510.9 (History of Mathematics)