Online math history lectures - MathOverflow

Online math history lectures

2010-09-14T05:08:09Z

This question is somewhat similar to this: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1714/best-online-math-videos

I'm using the word "history" loosely here. What I'm looking for are those lectures that put various mathematical developments in perspective by explaining their origins. There's something very insightful about seeing someone talk about the origins of a concept, that makes things click. Especially if he or she partook in the inception of that development.

So: where can I find such lectures online?

Answer by mathphysicist for Online math history lectures

2010-09-14T23:58:01Z

You may wish to look at the plenary lectures of the 2009 annual meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society (especially the two Tao's lectures)

http://www.unisa.edu.au/austms2009/videos/default.asp

and at the plenary talks at ICM 2010:

http://www.icm2010.com/archievedvideos.asp

(the commented listing of the videos can be found at this post of Timothy Gowers' blog)

Also, there is an extensive collection of the MSRI videos

http://www.msri.org/communications/vmath/index_html

of which I list here just a few examples that hopefully should meet your requirements regarding the discussion of historical aspects:

Roger Penrose: Twistor Theory, Old and New

Lectures on the Fermat's Last theorem

Irving Kaplansky's 80th Birthday Celebration

Last but not least, there is a large searchable collection of videos (mostly in Russian) at

http://www.mathnet.ru/php/presentation.phtml?option_lang=eng

where you can find e.g.

L.D. Faddeev's talk on the history of quantum groups (in Russian)

Yu.I. Manin's talk on the history of Euler products (in English)

A.M. Vershik's talk on the history and perspectives of the Kolmogorov entropy (in Russian)

Answer by Scott Guthery for Online math history lectures

2010-10-03T16:00:50Z

There are some videos relevant to the history of mathematics at the Clay Mathematics Institute (http://www.claymath.org/video/) and at the Fields Institute http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/audio/ The Fields section is titled "Audio and Slides" but there are some videos too. Cheers, Scott

Answer by R Hahn for Online math history lectures

2010-10-03T16:58:53Z

I just came across these BBC podcasts the other day. These are almost certainly more populist than you had in mind, but given the title of your question I thought I would throw it up here anyway. The are ten podcasts. Some expire in a day or so, which made me think posting it for those interested was a decent idea.

Newton and Leibniz
Leonard Euler
Joseph Fourier
Evariste Galois
Carl Friedrich Gauss
The Mathematicians Who Helped Einstein
Georg Cantor
Henri Poincare
Hardy and Ramanujan 10.Nicolas Bourbaki

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00srz5b

"Professor of Mathematics Marcus du Sautoy reveals the personalities behind the calculations and argues that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science"