From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5313 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: jim stasheff Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Dangerous knowledge Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:32:52 -0500 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: jim stasheff NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1259717485 30293 80.91.229.12 (2 Dec 2009 01:31:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 01:31:25 +0000 (UTC) To: Mike Stay , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed Dec 02 02:31:18 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NFe3q-0001jM-1z for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:31:18 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NFdPu-0001c9-01 for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:50:02 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5313 Archived-At: Mike Stay wrote: > Here's the summary from BBC's site: > =20 At least the Turing implication is very misleading - see below. > In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant > mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt G=F6del 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 G=F6del, 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. > =20 Certainly his suicide was because of his treatment as a homosexual and=20 not that irrational - not `crazy'. > 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. > =20 [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]