The Unending Journey of Mathematics

The series, “Story of Maths” has come to an end but unmasking the beauty of mathematics is an unending process because as problems are being resolved, new theorems or principles would arise.

The last episode is entitled, To Infinity and Beyond. Georg Cantor was the first person to ever understand the concept of infinity. He said that there was not just one infinity but many infinity. He also developed the Continuum Hypothesis. Back in high school, my understanding about infinite numbers was just shallow and I asked myself, what is the use of understanding such things? They are just mere numbers. I just solved equations involving infinity because the teacher just told me to do. And honestly, I cannot fully comprehend its meaning until now.

Moving on, Marcus de Sautoy scrutinized the work of another mathematician named Kurt Godel who struck me with this sentence, “This statement cannot be proved.” I cannot really imagine how complex equations would derive from that statement and eventually end up with a conclusion that it was impossible for mathematics to prove its own consistency. Marcus then examined the works of Paul Cohen who solved Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis and questioned if is there a set of infinite numbers bigger than the set of whole numbers but smaller than the set of decimals? He established approaches on mathematics in which contradictory answers are possible to address a specific question. Several mathematicians followed especially women and one of them was Julia Robinson who made significant contributions to math. 

 Lastly, I was pretty amazed by the mind of David Hilbert because he formulated 23 mathematical problems which made mathematicians desperate enough to solve them. And yes, some of the problems were cracked while others are left unanswered up to the present time especially the Riemann’s Hypothesis which has always been a mind-boggling one.

Indeed, mathematics is all about proofs and when it is proven, there would still be doubt. And also, the more abstract and complex mathematics is, the more is its practical applications to the real world.