The Sunday Times loved it, making it the Pick of the Week (BBC4, Wednesday, 10.05). “There is no space here to describe exactly what was so tricky about the work of Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing but this fascinating documentary describes how trying to solve the biggest problems in maths or physics drove the four men to their deaths.” Right.
Ninety minutes to cover transfinite set theory, entropy, the incompleteness theorems and non-computability is a tall order. The programme settled for not really explaining the great men's work in any detail, focusing instead on the thesis that it was the radical and unsettling nature of their theoretical contributions which drove them to insanity and/or death.
There is evidently a problem with this thesis. At any one time thousands of students are studying all of these concepts, in mathematical logic or physics courses. There is no evidence whatsoever of a corresponding widespread inclination to mental illness or suicide.
A more likely, although less telegenic theory is that each of these individuals was vulnerable/mentally-unstable, and each was subject to unbearable social pressure from unsupportive colleagues (and in the case of Turing, state repression). Unsurprising they buckled, as many people do.
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I concluded that it’s just naive to think this stuff can be packaged for even an educated non-mathematical audience ‘out there’.
And to think that Clare used to come round to my flat before we were married for maths lessons. How I have failed her!
