Eleven hours of lectures: a masterclass
The box set "A Mathematician at Les Métallos" is dedicated to Maryam Mirzakhani, who died in 2017. It contains four CDs offering eleven hours of material, including eight superbly staged popular mathematics lectures, as well as a 32-page booklet featuring descriptions of the lectures and two comic strips by Pénélope Bagieu: the first about mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, the second about the transatlantic cable, a great scientific and technological adventure of the 19th century.
Cédric Villani wanted his lectures to be accessible to the general public, and he has succeeded admirably. The staging means there is no need to dwell on the sometimes sophisticated formulas that appear on screen. The sheer variety of the lectures is astonishing: Mathematics of the bat; Of stars, particles and eternity; Poincaré's best and worst mistake; The living art of mathematics; When Earth was too young for Darwin; Of triangles, gases, prices and men; Mr Nash's extraordinary theorems; How to bring an idea to life.
This box set belongs in every high-school video library, ready to be shown in the classroom.
