 During Europe’s Middle Ages, mathematics flourished primarily on other shores. This program follows Professor Marcus du Sautoy as he discusses mathematical achievements of Asia, the Islamic world, and early-Renaissance Europe. Topics include China’s invention of a decimal place number system and the development of an early version of sudoku; India’s contribution to trigonometry and creation of a symbol for the number zero, as well as Indians’ understanding of the concepts of infinity and negative numbers; contributions of the empire of Islam, such as the development of algebra and the solving of cubic equations; and the spread of Eastern knowledge to the West through mathematicians like Leonardo Fibonacci. Original Open University title: The Genius of the East. A part of the series The Story of Math. (57 minutes)
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