History of Symmetry

Based on his book Why Beauty is Truth: A Short History of Symmetry, mathematician and science writer Ian Stewart provides a seven-part audio tour of symmetry, moving from the Babylonians to the Greeks, Arabs, Renaissance Italians, Revolutionary French, and nineteenth and twentieth century mathematicians and physicists.

All you need to know to understand this is a little algrebra, until, well, you get to relativity and quantum physics. I always get a little lost in there. Would that it were. But Stewart does a great job of making it as clear as possible.

1. Introducing Symmetry
2. Babylonian and Greek mathematics and the role of Omar Khayyam
3. Competitive mathematics in Renaissance Italy
4. Évariste Galois - the failed revolutionary
5. Physicists start to notice and Einstein changes everything
6. Symmetry and Quantum Mechanics
7. Symmetry, string theory and an equation for everything (plus - could we be living in an asymmetrical universe?)

Here's the Web Site. Also available on iTunes.

More Books by Ian Stewart