
11 Jul 1998

Cube
A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison. It soon becomes clear that each of them possesses the peculiar skills necessary to escape, if they don't wind up dead first.

NOVA leads viewers on a mathematical mystery tour -- a provocative exploration of math's astonishing power across the centuries. We discover math's signature in the swirl of a nautilus shell, the whirlpool of a galaxy and the spiral in the center of a sunflower. Math was essential to everything from the first wireless radio transmissions to the prediction and discovery of the Higgs boson and the successful landing of rovers on Mars. But where does math get its power? Astrophysicist and writer Mario Livio, along with a colorful cast of mathematicians, physicists and engineers, follows math from Pythagoras to Einstein and beyond, all leading to the ultimate riddle: Is math an invention or a discovery? Humankind's clever trick or the language of the universe?

Narrator (voice)

Actor
Self

Self

Self
Self

Self
Self

Self

11 Jul 1998

A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison. It soon becomes clear that each of them possesses the peculiar skills necessary to escape, if they don't wind up dead first.

15 Apr 2002

Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.

10 Oct 2004

A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.

10 Jul 1998

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

07 Oct 2007

Four mathematicians are imprisoned in a shrinking room; with the walls closing in, they must try anything to escape this fatal puzzle.

01 Jan 2010

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.

01 Sep 2015

Narrated by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons, The Genius of George Boole assembles academics and industry leaders from across the globe to explore the life and importance of one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes.

25 Jul 2024

In the 1940s, the world was in turmoil, and it was crucial to decipher the enemy's communication codes in a timely and accurate manner. Rong Jinzhen has shown amazing mathematical talent since her childhood, and because she solved the problems assigned by her math teacher, she was noticed by more people, and even walked into the door of code-breaking by mistake.

18 Jan 2008

At Oxford University, a professor and a grad student work together to try and stop a potential series of murders seemingly linked by mathematical symbols.

05 Sep 2005

Catherine is a woman in her late twenties who is strongly devoted to her father, Robert, a brilliant and well-known mathematician whose grip on reality is beginning to slip away. As Robert descends into madness, Catherine begins to wonder if she may have inherited her father's mental illness along with his mathematical genius.

25 Jan 2017

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.

28 Sep 2005

A humor-inflected history of the of the number one, covering military applications in ancient Rome, the measurement of distances in India, and the decimal system created by Leibnitz.

01 Feb 1946

Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.

26 Oct 2013

Exploring the murky and fast-paced world of the hackers out to steal money and identities and wreak havoc with people's online lives, and the scientists who are joining forces to help defeat them.
29 Oct 1987
The story of how, in 1914, the self-taught Indian mathematical genius SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN came to England and Trinity College, Cambridge, to work with the great British pure mathematician GH Hardy.

13 May 1993

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.

08 Apr 2016

Growing up poor in Madras, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar earns admittance to Cambridge University during WWI, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor, G.H. Hardy.

10 Dec 2016

The untold story of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – brilliant African-American women working at NASA and serving as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history – the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.

01 Nov 2023

The future of Marguerite, a brilliant student in Mathematics at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, seems all planned out. The only woman from her year, Marguerite is finishing a thesis she has to present to an audience of researchers. On the big day, a mistake shakes all her certainties and all her foundations collapse.

15 May 1994

The computer animation Outside In explains the amazing discovery, made by Steve Smale in 1957, that a sphere can be turned inside out by means of smooth motions and self-intersections. Through a combination of dialogue and exposition accessible to anyone who has some interest in mathematics, Outside In builds up to the grand finale: Bill Thurston's "corrugations" method of turning the sphere inside out.