Unsung Heroes and Remarkable Dreamers

                 The Story of Maths is a documentary by BBC and hosted by a mathematician named Marcus Du Sautoy. For the first of its four parts, it tackled about the very first stepping stones of Mathematics as we know it today. It discusses early civilizations that paved the way to greater histories, discoveries of ancient scholars and the many profound knowledge built from patterns and effects of the way people lived up to earlier times before.

                 As much as I could remember, Mr. Du Sautoy started talking of ancient Egyptian mathematics with more historical details from Dr. Annette Imhausen of Cambridge University. A very important papyrus revealed early evidence of how Egyptians manipulated numbers. Their hieroglyphs meant quantities and math was used in markets and seen as a practical importance especially in using fractions. I remember how they divide into half the numbers starting from 1 and end it until 1/64 only by a symbol, an eye of a god, half mortal and half falcon, with each part represented by a fraction each one half of before. They also tried finding the value of π by using the balls from a mancala game. They deduced it by dividing 64 to the square of 4.5, the radius. One of the Seven Wonders of the World resulted from their own unique mathematical system which manifested how they knew that the proportion of the longest to the shortest is the same to the sum of the two longest sides giving signs of a Pythagorean triangle, a perfect 90º 3-4-5 triangle. I also learned that bread and beer were their primary food and that Moscow papyrus contributed to knowing the volume of the pyramid with calculations similar to calculus.
                Next chapter told of Damascus, part of old Mesopotamia and the Babylonians. Dr. Eleanor Robson shared a fact that students learn and answered their assignments and exercises by clay tablets. Scribes especially used them and geometrical problems were popularly used. Unlike Egyptians that use by powers of 10, they use by powers of 60. 60 can be divided into a multitude of ways (2,3,4,5) and therefore, a good base for arithmetic. Aside from telling time, the Babylonian number system recognizes place value. Babylonians needed to cope w/ large numbers and invent a new symbol, preparing the way to one of the breakthroughs of math, ZERO. They were also the ones who started quadratic equations to find solutions for measuring land. Right angle triangle was discovered in a much more sophisticated way where square of the diagonal = sum of the squares of the other two. They knew it before the Greeks and even discovered that the square root of two is an irrational number where the decimal places don’t end, it goes on after.
               When the Greeks came to conquer the world, they used the civilizations under their power to empower their ruling. According to Prof. Christopher Anagnostakis of Albertus Magnus College, Greeks initiated the power of proof by proving axioms through careful steps of ogical reasoning leading to theorems and leading theorems to more theorems. As Mr. Du Sautoy said, proof is what gives mathematics its strength. In the west, a controversial Pythagoras founded a school where his teachings are beautiful arguments in geometry and thus, Pythagorean worldview suggests that math is the bedrock of knowledge. He also discovered the properties of right triangles and learned that the key to harmonic theory in music is a mathematical theory, whole number ratios. A follower of Pythagoras also learned what Babylonians discovered before, an irrational number. In Athens, Plato also founded an academy which is dedicated to mathematical intellect. He said that the world can be crystallized by 5 regular symmetrical shapes, the platonic solids which includes a tetrahedron – fire, icosahedron with 20 triangles – water, stable cube – earth, 8-faced octahedron – air and the dodecahedron with 12 pentagons – Plato’s view of the universe. Despite many achievements, Alexandria rival Plato’s academy and unfortunately, the library was destroyed when conquered by Muslims.
                  Other significantly important milestones sculpted by earlier mathematicians are Euclid geometry, and Archimedes’ greatest discovery. Euclid wrote a book, Elements, which is a culmination of mathematical revolution in Greece – axioms, formulas for volumes of cones and cylinders, proofs for geometric series, perfect numbers and primes. Its climax showed proofs that there are only 5 platonic solids, not only why it is only five but also why there can’t be a sixth. The written theorems of Elements are as true today as they were 2000 years ago. Archimedes, a mathematical visionary was known to have calculated the value of pi, the most important number in math and excelled in calculating the volumes of solid objects. He was the one who made weapons for mass destruction using mathematical concepts. In the end, he died staying true to his passion of uncovering new knowledge for the growing world of mathematics.
             Watching the film led me back to realized the greatest importance of mathematics in our daily lives today at the present times. The unsung heroes and remarkable dreamers have sketched us a masterpiece built by people and phenomena years and years ago only to provide meaning and understanding to the world we're living in. Names that may be written or not in the books we study does not define a brilliant student of mathematics. It would always be the passion to see through nature's patterns and crack out the codes to its beauty, find solutions and answers for the benefit of many. I am but a part of the growing history Math is yet to mold and it stays true even today that its complexities are the simplest forms of God's glory.