'Dangerous Knowledge': The tragic story of Cantor, Boltzmann, Gödel and Turing

BBC's description of the documentary, Dangerous Knowledge (1h30min):

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.

Technorati Tags: Alan Turing, BBC, Dangerous Knowledge, David Malone, Georg Cantor, Greg Chaitin, infinity, Kurt Godel, Ludwig Boltzmann, mathematicians, suicide, Roger Penrose

Comments

[Mike Godfrey]

Hi CC,
Thanks for the link.
Having watched 'Dangerous Knowledge' it leaves me wondering what all these theories these guys had were, it was a bit light on detail and heavy on interpretation.
But its interesting to see the loss of certainty at the turn of the century leading to that notion that God had been made obsolete, for instance Nietzsche's god is dead statement.
A loss of certainty with logic possibly trickles down to cover everything else, including a loss of certainty regarding ourselves , our value and definitions.
Is it pure coincidence but the century following this move away from certainty and gods demise was the most bloody in history ,or am I making casual links where there are none ?
Cheers,
Mike

[CC]

First of all, thanks to Roy, Navid, Peter, Douglas, Ken, 'White hole cosmology?' and KE for the recent comments.

As for Mike Godfrey's comments on this post, let me quote a famous line from the movie Mission: Impossible III, which advice I will heed -- "Mr. Musgrave, please don't interrupt me when I'm asking rhetorical questions."

Regards to all readers of CC.

Hope to be able to post more regularly. But I sure am glad you are not paying me to do this!

[Mike Godfrey]

Me...Rhetorical ?