In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.
Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt Gödel, the introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a sanatorium where he starved himself to death.
Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things are fundamentally unprovable.
The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose.
Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today.
Go on a journey to the ancient cities Volterra, Populonia and Cervetari and see why Etruscan civilization was famous for its extravagant wealth, fine ceramics, handicrafts and bustling trade, and how it was all lost in battles with the Greek colonies in southern Italy.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkOS4NoUKyA
This documentary reveals the discoveries of a forgotten genius, many of which went virtually unnoticed for nearly a century. Nikola Tesla is considered the father of our modern technological age and one of the most mysterious and controversial scientists in history. Encyclopedia Britannica lists Nikola Tesla as one of the top ten most fascinating people in history.
Using the latest high-speed cameras, Richard Hammond takes us on a journey beyond our eye's limits, letting us see secrets hidden in every element of our planet. A world where thin air can shatter rock. And water can tear through metal. A world where the fastest thing on earth lies right beneath our feet. And where a spectacular celestial display is finally captured, even though many have claimed it doesn't even exist.
Features Thimphu, Sylhet, Dhaka and Chittagong. Ends on the Bay of Bengal. This episode was one of the few instances where the media gave attention to the Grameen Bank and Muhammed Yunus's efforts, in the micro-economic scale in Bangladesh before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for it. From Bhutan, hikes the country's National Parks, meeting some nobility and interviewing them, going to a royal bird sanctuary. In Bangladesh, he meet some stone quarry workers, meeting Muhammad Yunus (economist), taking a boat ride to the Dhaka's river delta and ends up having a cruise along the river to the Bay of Bengal. Palin also visits the famous Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard, the largest seagoing vessel dismantling station in the world.
"Not a tree stands. Not a square foot of surface has escaped mutilation.There is nothing but the mud and the gaping shell holes; a chaotic wilderness of shell holes, rim overlapping rim, and, in the bottom of many, the bodies of the dead? CAPTAIN ROWLAND FIELDING WWI WAS ON A SCALE NEVER KNOWN OR IMAGINED BEFORE.