Albert Einstein: l'homme et le génie

On January 15, 1972, Leonid Pliouchtch, a Ukrainian mathematician who was unknown at the time, was locked up in a Soviet psychiatric institution and accused of dissidence. His wife, Tatiana, fought for his defense and contacted a committee of French mathematicians to help him. Led by Laurent Schwartz, they launched a three-year campaign to secure his release and succeeded in getting the USSR to back down on the issue.

A documentary produced in 1979 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Albert Einstein. Narrated and hosted by Peter Ustinov and written by Nigel Calder.

Partly adapted from cosmologist Stephen Hawking's popular book about his theories of the universe, this in-depth documentary also presents Hawking's daily life as he deals with the ALS that renders him virtually immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, former classmates and peers are interviewed about not only his theories but the man himself.

What is Bitcoin? With the advent of Bitcoin, the world's first digital currency, for the first time in history money is no longer controlled by banks or governments, but by the people who use it. But where did this currency come from? How does it work? And is it truly the way forward, or just a flash in the pan? Magic Money answers these questions and more as it explores the mysterious origins of Bitcoin, its role in society, and how it could shape the future.

A mockumentary-style short film that humorously follows political science students debating whether math has any real place in their discipline. Through chaptered banter, fourth-wall breaks, and satire, the film exposes the uneasy but unavoidable relationship between numbers, power, and political truth.

Until recently geometry was 'cold', incapable of describing the irregular shape of a cloud, the slope of a mountain or the beauty of the human body. With fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot gave us a language for our natural world. In this captivating documentary, the man himself explains this groundbreaking discovery.

Based on the thesis of Alejandro Rivero and Ernesto Pacheco, this documentary attempts to glimpse, through the senses, the fourth mathematical dimension.

Made entirely on Roger Wagner's HyperStudio software, Chris Marker explores set theory, using Noah's Ark as an example.

A documentary about the life and works of the artist M. C. Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

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Structural study of a tree. Light, water and air coax it out of the soil in a manner foregrounding time’s relativity to different forms of life on Earth. Made the day my brother got his fork-lift license.

Who invented time, who invented the clock? Why 1 hour, why 60 minutes, why 60 seconds? Since prehistoric times, man has sought to measure time, to organize social and religious life, to plan food supply... Today we can surf the Internet, geolocate, pay by credit card… All our daily lives depend on time and the synchronization of clocks. The history of the invention of time and of the ways and instruments to measure it is a long story…

Filmed in Canada, Iran, and the United States, Secrets of the Surface: The Mathematical Vision of Maryam Mirzakhani examines the life and mathematical work of Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian immigrant to the United States who became a superstar in her field. In 2014, she was both the first woman and the first Iranian to be honored by mathematics' highest prize, the Fields Medal. Mirzakhani's contributions are explained by leading mathematicians and illustrated by animated sequences. Her mathematical colleagues from around the world, as well as former teachers, classmates, and students in Iran today, convey the deep impact of her achievements. The path of her education, success on Iran's Math Olympiad team, and her brilliant work, make Mirzakhani an ideal role model for girls looking toward careers in science and mathematics. Written by George Csicsery

In April 1969 Ilya (Eliyahu) Rips, then a young student of mathematics, tried to burn himself in a public square in Riga, Latvia protesting against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was stopped and eventually sent to a psychiatric hospital for two years. Thanks to international pressure from the mathematical community in 1972 he was allowed to emigrate to Israel. Now he is considered one of the most brilliant mathematicians in the world. At the same time, for most people familiar with his name, Rips is first of all associated with the development of the so called Bible Code – a mathematical program allegedly helping to decipher hidden messages encoded in Torah – the Five Books of Moses. He is attacked by both the scientific and religious community, yet his research continues.

A portrait of the visionary Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972), according to his own words, taken from his diary, his correspondence and the texts of his lectures.

A documentary about the life and work of seminal mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

On November 25, 1915, Einstein presents his famous General Theory of Relativity. Just a few years later, his revolutionary ideas about space and time are confirmed during a solar eclipse. Overnight, Einstein became a scientific superstar. Einstein skillfully uses his popularity to give a war-torn world what it longs for: his genius, his humanitarian ideals, his unconventional appearance, his civil courage. Einstein's judgment was soon in demand far beyond the field of physics.

The core of the video is a pedagogical workshop on the Theory of Special Relativity as part of the educational process conducted by our youth leadership. Not for the sake of understanding the theory itself, but using Einstein's particular discovery as a case study to demonstrate and walk people through real human thinking, as being something above sense perceptions or opinions. We end with reflecting on the principle of relativity in terms of social relations and individual identities or thought processes, asking the question - how was Einstein able to make his breakthrough?

In an age when genius is a mere commodity, it is useful to look at a person who led a rich life without the traditional trappings of success. A man with no home and no job, Paul Erdös was the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Born in Hungary in 1913, Erdös wrote and co-authored over 1,500 papers and pioneered several fields in theoretical mathematics. At the age of 83 he still spent most of his time on the road, going from math meeting to math meeting, continually working on problems. He died on September 20, 1996 while attending such a meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

This captivating documentary from the History Channel recounts the development of iconic physicist Albert Einstein's provocative theory of general relativity. Some 200 years after the introduction of Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation, Einstein rocked the science community with his theory, which suggests that gravity is a warping of space-time caused by the presence of matter.