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The Story of Maths. The Language of the

Universe
- Prof Marcus Du Sautoy
Egyptians:
Recording the patterns for the seasons was essential, not only to their management of the land, but also
their religion.
As settlements grew larger, it became necessary to find ways to administer them. Areas of land needed
to be calculated, crop yields predicted, taxes charged and collated. In short, people needed to count and
measure.
It was vital to know the area of a farmer's land so he could be taxed accordingly. Or if the Nile robbed him
of part of his land, so he could request a rebate. It meant that the pharaoh's surveyors were often
calculating the area of irregular parcels of land.
Rhind Papyrus:
The hieroglyphs are beautiful, but the Egyptian number system was fundamentally flawed. They had no
concept of a place value so one stroke could only represent one unit not 100 or 1,000. Although you can
write a million with just one character,
Fractions are clearly of practical importance to anyone dividing quantities for trade in the market.
This is the first hint of something called a geometric series and it appears at a number of points in the
Rhind Papyrus but the concept of infinite series would remain hidden until the mathematicians of Asia
discovered it centuries later.
Area of circle and its exactness
The Egyptian calculation gives us the first accurate value for pi.
It's the hint of symmetry hidden inside these shapes that makes them so impressive for a mathematician.
The pyramids are just a little short to create these perfect shapes but some have suggested another
important mathematical concept might be hidden inside the proportions of the Great Pyramid - the
golden ratio.
Two lengths are in the golden ratio, if the relationship of the longest to the shortest is the same as the
sum of the two to the longest side.
This is because three squared, plus four squared, is equal to five squared so we've got a perfect
Pythagorean triangle. In fact any triangle whose sides satisfy this relationship will give me an 90-degree
angle.
Every problem was solved using concrete numbers and then if a verification would be carried out at the
end, it would use the result and these concrete, given numbers there's no general proof within the
Egyptian mathematical texts.
Calculation of volume of truncated pyramid and use of calculus.
Damascus: (Babylonians)
The people we know most about are the scribes, the professionally literate and numerate people who
kept the records for the wealthy families and for the temples and palaces.
Scribe records on clay tablets such as exercises and homeworks.
They used the 12 knuckles on one hand and the five fingers on the other to be able to count. 12 times 5, ie
60 different numbers.
The divisibility of 60 makes it a perfect base in which to do arithmetic : 60 seconds in a minute, 60
minutes in an hour.
They had a system of angular measurement: 360 degrees in a full circle, each degree was divided into 60
minutes, a minute was further divided into 60 seconds. So they had a regular system for measurement,
and it was in perfect harmony with their number system, so it's well suited not only for observation but
also for calculation. But in order to calculate and cope with these large numbers the Babylonians needed
to invent a new symbol and in so doing, they prepared the ground for one of the great breakthroughs in
the history of mathematics - zero.
Babylonian engineers and surveyors found ingenious ways of accessing water, and channelling it to the
crop fields. Yet again, they used mathematics to come up with solutions.
The use of quadratic equations, one of the greatest legacies of Babylonian mathematics. Quadratic
equations involve things where the unknown quantity and it's in the context of calculating the area of land
that these quadratic equations naturally arise.
The amazing feat of the Babylonians is that they were using these geometric games to find the value
without any recourse to symbols or formulas. The Babylonians were enjoying problem-solving for its own
sake.
People who played games were using numbers in their leisure time to try and outwit their opponent, doing
mental arithmetic very fast and so they were calculating in their leisure time without even thinking about it
as being mathematical hard work.
The Babylonians are recognised as one of the first cultures to use symmetrical mathematical shapes to
make dice,
Plimpton 322 (most famous babylonian tablet) : the principle regarding right-angled triangles that the
square on the diagonal is the sum of the squares on the sides, and known centuries before the Greeks
claimed it.
The square root of two is what we now call an irrational number, that is, if we write it out in decimals, or
even in sexigesimal places, it doesn't end, the numbers go on forever after the decimal point.
Palmyra (Greeks):
Power of proof. Somehow they decided that they had to have a deductive system for their mathematics
and the typical deductive system was to begin with certain axioms, which you assume are true. It's as if
you assume a certain theorem is true without proving it and then, using logical methods and very careful
steps from these axioms you prove the theorem and from those theorems you prove more theorems, and
it just snowballs. Proof is what gives mathematics its strength.
Samos: (birth of Greel Mathematics) (Phytagoras)
Mathematics as a tool for accounting to the analytic subject we recognise today.
Properties of right-angled triangles. What's known as Pythagoras' theorem states that if you take any
right-angled triangle, build squares on all the sides, then the area of the largest square is equal to the sum
of the squares on the two smaller sides.
Discovery of harmonic series. Experimenting with a stringed instrument, Pythagoras discovered that the
intervals between harmonious musical notes were always represented as whole-number ratios.
Irrational numbers.
Plato:
Proposed that the universe could be crystallised into five regular symmetrical shapes. These shapes,
which we now call the Platonic solids were composed of regular polygons, assembled to create three-
dimensional symmetrical objects.
Euclid:
The Elements. It's built on a series of mathematical assumptions, called axioms. From these axioms,
logical deductions are made and mathematical theorems established.
The Elements contains formulas for calculating the volumes of cones and cylinders, proofs about
geometric series, perfect numbers and primes. The climax of The Elements is a proof that there are only
five Platonic solids. As true today as they were 2,000 years ago.
Archimedes:
Polygons, with solids. He then moved on to centres of gravity. He then moved on to the spiral. This
instinct to try and mathematise everything is something that I see as a legacy. Archimedes was
enraptured by pure mathematics and believed in studying mathematics for its own sake.
One of his finest investigations into pure mathematics was to produce formulas to calculate the areas of
regular shapes. Archimedes' method was to capture new shapes by using shapes he already understood.
Calculate the volume of a sphere by slicing it up and approximating each slice as a cylinder. He then
added up the volumes of the slices to get an approximate value for the sphere. But his act of genius was
to see what happens if you make the slices thinner and thinner. In the limit, the approximation becomes
an exact calculation.
Archimedes was contemplating a problem about circles traced in the sand.when a Roman soldier
accosted him, Archimedes was so engrossed in his problem that he insisted that he be allowed to finish
his theorem but the Roman soldier was not interested in Archimedes' problem and killed him on the spot.
Hypatia: (Female Mathematician)
Politically influential and demanded to continue the legacy of Greek Mathematics and her death dealt a
final blow to the Greek mathematical heritage of Alexandria.
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