The Story of Maths
| 10:00 UK time, Wednesday, 8 October 2008
The Story of Maths is a new four-part series about the history of mathematics, presented by Oxford professor Marcus du Sautoy.
In this first programme, The Language of the Universe, du Sautoy shows how fundamental maths is to our lives, before exploring the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece.
In Egypt, he uncovers use of a decimal system based on ten fingers of the hand, while in former Mesopotamia he discovers that the way we tell the time today is based on the Babylonian Base 60 number system.
In Greece, he looks at the contributions of some of the giants of mathematics including Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras, who is credited with beginning the transformation of mathematics from a tool for counting into the analytical subject we know today.
