Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Beauty of Mathematics, with Jeremy Irons About this episode This week, Neil Tyson explores the language of the universe and the life of self-taught math genius Ramanujan. With Jeremy Irons and Matthew Brown from “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” co-host Eugene Mirman, mathematician Ken Ono, Mona Chalabi, and Bill Nye.
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Transcript 8,471 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. This is StarTalk and I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tonight, we're talking about mathematics, the language of the universe. And we're featuring my interview with actor Jeremy Irons and film director Matthew Brown on the film The Man Who Knew Infinity. So, let's do this.
0:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I got with me comedic co-host Eugene Mirman. Eugene, welcome back. Great to be here. All right, good to have you.
1:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I've got with me a real live mathematician. They do exist in the world. Ken Ono. I'm right here. Glad to be here. So you're professor of math at Emory University? That's right. And you're also a consultant and associate producer of the film The Man Who Knew Infinity? That's right. That's cool. Yeah, it's totally cool. No, it's good that Hollywood is like looking for people with that kind of academic expertise to help this situation. So tonight, we're gonna get into the beauty and genius of mathematics. But before we do, let's get a sense of how they told the story in The Man Who Knew Infinity. Let's check out the movie trailer.
1:44 Speaker 01 From an Indian clerk, ill-educated in Madras, I would very highly value any advice you give me.
1:51 Speaker 02 Letter for you, postmarked in England.
1:55 Speaker 01 Yours truly, S. Ramanujan.
1:59 Speaker 02 What does the S. stand for?
2:00 Speaker 01 Ask him yourself.
2:02 Speaker 02 You intend to invite him here?
2:07 Speaker 03 Don't forget me.
2:08 Speaker 02 I could never.
2:13 Speaker 03 Are you Romanujan, my child? Oh, don't be intimidated. Great knowledge comes from the humblest of origins.
2:21 Speaker 01 For the good of everybody, you should attend some lectures.
2:24 Speaker 03 But I'm here to publish.
2:27 Speaker 01 We need proofs of your work.
2:29 Speaker 03 But they are right, sir.
2:30 Speaker 04 I hadn't completed that proof. How did you know?
2:33 Speaker 03 I just do. You don't pull a stunt like that in my class.
2:36 Speaker 04 Now, get out!
2:37 Speaker 01 How do you know that theorem?
2:39 Speaker 03 It came to me. These steps you want, I do not know how to do. Where do you think you're going? It's our home.
2:48 Speaker 03 Don't you know what I've given up to be here? I have nothing.
2:56 Speaker 03 You wanted to know how I get my ideas. God speaks to me.
2:59 Speaker 02 There are no proofs. We're just supposed to take him at his word?
3:03 Speaker 01 No, you're to take him at mine. There are no proofs that can determine the outcome of matters of the heart. We are merely explorers of infinity in the pursuit of absolute perfection.
3:16 Speaker 03 I owe you so much.
3:17 Speaker 01 No, no, no. It's I who owe you.
3:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some powerful stuff. So, the film starts Dev Patel. That's right. And he's a well-known actor. From Slumdog Millionaire. Yeah, from Slumdog Millionaire. And he's portraying the Indian math genius, Ramanujan. Exactly. Excellent. And also Jeremy Irons. Right. As his mentor. G.H. Hardy. Yeah, and he's playing G.H. Hardy, a famous English mathematician. So, we don't often see mathematicians as the main character of a movie. Maybe they'll throw one in because they gotta solve something, and you go in and come out of their character. This one, the main character is a mathematician. That's right. And so, that's impressive for me that there be a feature-length film fully produced with real actors on this subject. And really good actors.
4:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Real, really... A super-quality film, by the way. Really good actors. In fact, one of the really good actors is Jeremy Irons. And, in fact, he and the director, Matt Brown, came through town. So I nabbed them, put them in my office, and I asked Jeremy Irons.
4:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who's playing the British mathematician J. H. Hardy. I asked him what first hooked him on this story. Because that's to get such star power, something's got to click.
4:44 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In ways that no one can predict, not even the director. So let's check it out.
4:50 Speaker 01 This boy knew things which could not be imagined. And where does that come from? And I was, I was very interested in, in, in, in playing the relationship of this very closed English mathematician, slowly opening up to the amazement of this man who, he would dream and when he was, when he was, um, uh, when he was meditating, his god, Namagiri, would place the, that's how he would, he would describe his discoveries, would place these calculations on his tongue. And then he'd be able to write them down. And my character is an atheist, didn't believe in God.
5:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? J. H. Hardy.
5:31 Speaker 01 J. H. Hardy. So how do you explain that? I mean, for me, it was, it was.
5:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like, take that.
5:38 Speaker 01 It's a wonder, you know, as Shakespeare says, there is more to this heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy. We think we know everything. I mean, you scientists, you think you know everything. You have not, Stephen Hawking doesn't believe God exists. I mean, how can you say that? When you say, um, the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it, I would say the good thing about God is that it's true whether or not you believe it.
6:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jeremy Irons.
6:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so Ken, what do you make of his explanation? That God placed these formulas on his tongue?
6:09 Speaker 05 Well, you can take that at many different levels. I'm not Hindu. I don't have goddess Namagiri helping me, at least, I don't think so.
6:14 Eugene Mirman? Well, you don't.
6:15 Speaker 05 I don't know, maybe I do. But honestly, there's so much about Ramanujan that we don't understand. He left behind notebooks, but he didn't write down his methods. There are almost no words in his notebooks. So certainly there's something very mysterious about everything that is Ramanujan that we can't explain.
6:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So let's hear more from my interview with Jeremy Irons and Matt Brown from the film The Man Who Knew Infinity. Let's check it out.
6:39 Speaker 07 I had no idea what I was getting into, none. It's been a 12-year journey to get the film made. 12 years? 12 years. Why? I think that's- What's wrong with what? What's wrong with Hollywood? No, it was just, I think it's the-
6:53 Speaker 01 In terms of astrophysics, 12 years is a blink of an eye.
6:56 Speaker 07 That's true. Thank you. Thank you. It's very true. In a billion years, it's just the bat of an eyelash, yes. No, I think Hollywood was a little intimidated by the subject matter, so that took a long time. So, it was a book, based on a book? It was a book. It was Robert Cantigall wrote the most incredible biography, The Man Who Knew Infinity. I've read this book probably more than any other book I've ever read. It is a wonderful biography about the life of the math genius Ramanujan, who was at the turn of the century, he had no formal education to speak of. He was discovering whole fields of mathematics and rediscovering fields. I think when he was 12 or 13, he thought he had discovered trigonometry. Years old. Yes, 12 or 13- This is declared.
7:38 Speaker 07 At 12 or 13 years old, he discovered trigonometry, the entire field. And then he went into school only to find out that it had already been discovered and he was deeply disappointed. So, but that was sort of the story for him in life, that he was out there on his own, he was a real outlier. And eventually- And no one knew this because he was living in India. Yeah, he was in Madras, India, and he had actually flunked out of college twice because he was so obsessed with his mathematics. And so he really toiled in isolation for a really long time until he finally got a job as a clerk at the port trust in Madras. And with the help of some people there that believed in him, they sent off three letters to three mathematicians at Trinity College, Cambridge.
8:23 Speaker 07 And two of them were immediately dismissed as hoaxes. And the third letter by G.H. Hardy, the character that Jeremy portrays, he wasn't sure at first, and then he recognized something in it, and it just got under his skin. And he realized that this man was legitimate.
8:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So tonight, we're gonna get into the story of how you discover a math genius. What that takes, what that, how that happened in that case? Is that something we can duplicate? Is it something we should, we should set agencies loose to try to find? And also, we're gonna explore the beauty of math. And for many people, those two words don't belong in the same sentence.
9:03 Speaker 05 Maybe I'm the only one that thinks on that one.
9:05 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
9:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you advised on this film, and you're a professional mathematician.
9:10 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, I'm a professional.
9:15 Eugene Mirman? Yes, I believe you.
9:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just confirming.
9:17 Eugene Mirman? It'd be weird to get an amateur mathematician. Be like, "That equation's close enough."
9:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't want the amateurs on the stage here. So could you tell us why Ramanujan's work is so important? And why it may still matter today? When was this? This was how long ago?
9:34 Speaker 05 So, Ramanujan went to Cambridge during World War I.
9:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This would be Cambridge, England.
9:39 Speaker 05 England, this is 100 years ago. And he went there at a time when, well, India was under English, you know, they were an English colony, basically. So culturally, it was very difficult. But why does Ramanujan matter now? Well, he matters now because, it's an amazing story. He left behind three shabby notebooks that we're still studying today. And we discover that the formulas that he wrote down are useful for studying things like string theory and quantum gravity, subjects that didn't even exist when he was alive. It was like he was an incomplete prophet. And so, I've been studying him for 30 years, and a lot of the best mathematicians have. And it's crazy, it's hard to believe it's true.
10:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so he's played a role in many people's lives, but including, and perhaps especially yours?
10:26 Speaker 05 Oh, definitely. I first learned about Ramanujan at two-time college dropout when I was in high school. I needed to know that it was okay to not be a straight A student. So he was first a role model for me, and an inspiration in that way. But it was only in graduate school.
10:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You started as a flunky?
10:43 Speaker 05 I dropped out of high school.
10:44 Eugene Mirman? You could have used Slash as a role model, too.
10:48 Speaker 05 I almost did.
10:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
10:52 Speaker 05 So I did. I dropped out of high school and I fought with my parents because I didn't want to get straight A's and great test scores, only to discover that my father, who is a mathematician, looks up to himself a two-time college dropout. And that was such welcome news to, you know, that was awesome to hear that you could be a, you didn't have to be a straight A student, you didn't have to go through this inelastic system and be successful.
11:15 Eugene Mirman? I have a very similar story. My father was a mathematician and I was a terrible student.
11:21 Speaker 05 You didn't have Romanogen.
11:22 Eugene Mirman? That was probably what led me to comedy instead of math.
11:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait. So this so impactful in your life was this awareness of Romanogen that you wrote a kind of a memoir?
11:36 Speaker 05 I did, I did.
11:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What was that?
11:38 Speaker 05 So it's called My Search for Romanogen. It's...
11:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, wait, wait, wait. Oh, oh, oh.
11:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa. It just appeared on my table. Wait. My Search for Romanogen. Yes, How I Learned to Count.
11:52 Speaker 05 Right. And that's actually a pun because for...
11:56 Eugene Mirman? Was he a count?
11:59 Eugene Mirman? That would be the easiest way for it to be a pun, but I'm sure you have another.
12:03 Speaker 05 It was actually about finding self-confidence when...
12:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How to matter to...
12:07 Speaker 05 How to matter in your, exactly. Right. So I really...
12:13 Eugene Mirman? I understand.
12:15 Speaker 05 So I wrote this book because as a professor at Emory, we got a lot of students that are totally stressed out about test scores and getting into a top graduate school, when honestly, none of that really matters at the end of the day. And so I wanted to share my weaknesses when, you know, most of my students wouldn't believe that any of what I wrote was actually true.
12:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So from what I know of your work, you work on a pair of equations called Rogers-Romanogen Identities?
12:42 Speaker 05 That's some of those things. Oh, these are actually the formulas that Romanogen wrote in a letter that he wrote to Hardy that Hardy recognized as pure genius. Believe it or not, when Hardy, when Hardy received that letter a hundred years ago, he didn't understand those equations, and we only figured them out a hundred, uh, a hundred years later, just two years ago.
13:01 Eugene Mirman? What made him recognize it as genius as opposed to be like, "This is all just cuckoo numbers"?
13:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, because-
13:06 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, that's a very good point.
13:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if Hardy doesn't know what he's looking at, and Hardy knows that he himself is a, an important, famous mathematician-
13:14 Speaker 05 Right.
13:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why say, "This is brilliant, in a hundred years we'll figure it out", rather than say, "This is crazy, it's just gibberish"?
13:20 Speaker 05 So, that's an amazing statement, because most mathematicians at the time dismissed Ramanujan as a crackpot. It actually took Hardy, who may have been the only man alive at that time, to recognize that there could have been some value in these crazy expressions. Sometimes it takes a genius to recognize a genius.
13:38 Eugene Mirman? That's what I tell people.
13:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so, alright, so, how could J.H. Hardy look at something he himself doesn't understand, yet assert that it's genius?
13:48 Speaker 05 So, what Hardy said is the, the equation that Ramanujan wrote down was so far-fetched, it, there had to be some truth in it, because no one would have the imagination to equate two so very different objects.
14:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so his accounting is, God touched his tongue, and it came out, or touched his pen, but it was tongue, whatever. I mean, he wrote them down.
14:09 Speaker 05 That's right.
14:09 Eugene Mirman? He wrote like a math bible, that's what his claim is.
14:12 Speaker 05 It's very funny you say that, yeah.
14:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, very interesting.
14:14 Speaker 05 He's like an incomplete prophet, in many ways. We are still mining that, those notebooks. I'm not alone, um, there's-
14:21 Eugene Mirman? Good.
14:21 Speaker 05 That's actually, well, actually, I wish I was alone, I wish I could have it all to myself.
14:25 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
14:25 Speaker 05 Um, but, uh, no, it's so much-
14:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when you're a math genius, uh, it works to have God put formulas on your tongue?
14:32 Eugene Mirman? Or be very good at math.
14:34 Speaker 05 Well, work for Ramanujan.
14:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Would you analogize him to Mozart?
14:38 Speaker 05 Actually, many people have, many people have.
14:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who at a young age just writes- Writes down whole symphonies, and-
14:43 Speaker 05 Exactly.
14:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is. And where's the, where, where, where are the erasers? Where are the, where are the practice notebooks? No.
14:50 Speaker 05 Oh, I wish we knew, it's, yeah.
14:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's all there.
14:52 Speaker 05 It's, who knows where it is.
14:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But are you, are you suggesting that the way Ramanujan did it is somehow more beautiful than the way others have solved their mathematical problems?
15:03 Speaker 05 Well, I mean-
15:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you value judging-
15:04 Speaker 05 No, I'm not.
15:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? -the beauty of their work?
15:06 Speaker 05 Well, in all fairness, paper was very expensive in India at the time that Ramanujan lived, so, so, so he worked on a slate-
15:13 Eugene Mirman? And he worked in his head?
15:15 Speaker 05 And he worked mostly in his head, and he only recorded his conclusions in his notebooks. So we'll never know how he actually came about all of his works. Um, it's very different from what we do. We take classes, we read papers, and then there are open problems and we try to solve them.
15:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you value that as beauty and elegance?
15:33 Speaker 05 Oh, absolutely. I value both, honestly. You can be an important mathematician in many different ways.
15:39 Eugene Mirman? Even with paper?
15:40 Speaker 05 Well, and in computers now, yeah.
15:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. No, I agree.
15:43 Speaker 05 Every prof- every profession needs its Kings and its Carters, and there's nothing wrong with being a Carter. Most of us are Carters.
15:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's a, what's a Carter?
15:51 Speaker 05 Someone who does the day labor.
15:52 Eugene Mirman? Oh, okay. I was like, why are you bringing Jeremy Carter into this?
15:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So more on genius and the beauty of mathematics when StarTalk returns.
16:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk, and we're featuring my interview with actor Jeremy Irons and director Matt Brown for the movie The Man Who Knew Infinity. And I had to learn, how did Jeremy come to play the role of the famous British mathematician G. H. Hardy? Let's check it out. Of course, you needed a Brit to play that role. Were you thinking this guy at the time, or what?
16:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
16:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When does he come into the equation?
16:39 Speaker 05 He comes into the equation, uh-
16:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like the way I said that? When does he come into the equation?
16:45 Speaker 07 You're so technical. I mean, you know, I was, it was, um, it took a while to, I guess, to get the gumption to even ask somebody of Jeremy's stature to do this film. So, you, you hope and dream that somebody would play this kind of a role, but Jeremy read the script and then I think I gave him A Mathematician's Apology, which was a book written by G. H. Hardy, and I think that really resonated with him.
17:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And G. H. Hardy is the mathematician in Cambridge who discovered...
17:17 Speaker 07 Yeah. It's a beautiful piece of writing. I mean, it's, it's, he was a very creative man, um, beyond just mathematics. He's a beautiful writer as well. So, he really made mathematics something that I think he could talk about emotionally. I think people often think of mathematicians as sort of esoteric and out there and are intimidated by it, and these are real people. They're not all just madmen scribbling on a wall.
17:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ken, how do you, how do you feel about math? Are you a madman scribbling on a wall?
17:45 Speaker 05 Uh, no, I'm not a madman scribbling.
17:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's just what a madman would say about his own...
17:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, but think about it. Math is admittedly one of the most feared subjects in school. The phrase "I was never good at math" is probably uttered more than "I was never good at any other subject in the curriculum." And so, what gives there?
18:04 Speaker 05 Think of it this way, if you were an athlete, if you were training for a marathon, you wouldn't just expect to be fast at it, you'd have to practice, right? And so, um, I think the reason people often say they're not good at math is because there's this belief that if you're good at math, you were just born with it, and that's just like so untrue, right?
18:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, how do you, how do you convey to people that you just encounter in the street that math is something beautiful?
18:28 Speaker 05 Well, I don't actually do that for a living. I do that in my classes.
18:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. See, okay, well, wait, back up, no, I'm with you, all right. So, I, an astrophysicist, can grab anybody by the lapels in the street and tell them something completely beautiful about the universe, and I think they will agree with my sentiment on its beauty.
18:47 Speaker 05 That's right.
18:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, can you do that with math?
18:50 Speaker 05 Uh, well, now, okay, so let me give you an example. Let me tell you something you probably didn't know. So, every March, we celebrate Pi Day.
18:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pi Day?
18:59 Speaker 05 March 14th, and...
19:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, I'm wearing a pie tie.
19:02 Speaker 05 Well, okay.
19:06 Speaker 05 So here's the thing.
19:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm still showing my time.
19:10 Speaker 05 Okay. So while you're showing your time, I'll tell you. So there are people that even memorize like 100 digits of pi or 1,000 digits of pi.
19:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, my son did that once. It's kind of out of control.
19:20 Speaker 05 I think it's a little weird, honestly.
19:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I agree. I told him. I said, "That's weird."
19:26 Speaker 05 So I think something is beautiful when you get patterns out of things that are like, you don't expect to see patterns out of like-
19:32 Eugene Mirman? Like serial killers?
19:34 Speaker 05 So check this out. This is what-
19:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's their killing pattern? You're exactly right. That's the first thing they talk about in the police precinct.
19:42 Eugene Mirman? But what about-
19:43 Speaker 05 So getting back to pi, so Romanujin was one of the people who could tame pi, and believe it or not, he could tell you exactly what pi was by just writing down the odd numbers in order. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. He gave a procedure to exactly calculating pi.
19:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you said he tamed pi?
20:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's not true that 3.14, that pi is 3.1415 and eventually nobody knows. If you're willing to be creative and think of, rethink how you would write down that number, Romanujin showed you a way and it only took-
20:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I think we've got an image of one of his expressions of pi. Let's check it out.
20:16 Speaker 05 There you go. Do you see all those squares? 1, 3, 5, 7, 9? Everyone knows what comes next. 11 followed by 13.
20:25 Eugene Mirman? So that's another way to write pi?
20:27 Speaker 05 This is actually how I would write pi and it's beautiful. The 3 point, the 1415 mess, that's that sequence of 1 squared, 3 squared-
20:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like an infinite fraction.
20:37 Speaker 05 Goes on forever. But there's no, there's nothing hard about remembering that pattern.
20:43 Eugene Mirman? I can't wait to show that to somebody at a party.
20:49 Eugene Mirman? Well, this is how I would write pi.
20:50 Speaker 05 Well, okay, well, we're not-
20:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, wait.
20:53 Speaker 05 Have a drink.
20:53 Eugene Mirman? No, I will. I'm 100% serious.
20:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, wait. So in the movie, Romanujin says that a mathematical formula is like a painting, but with colors you cannot see.
21:06 Speaker 05 That's right. He does say that.
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh. I was hoping for a reaction from you.
21:13 Speaker 05 Okay.
21:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But rather than affirming that he says it.
21:16 Eugene Mirman? I think you can see the colors.
21:18 Speaker 05 So here's the thing.
21:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
21:20 Speaker 05 Why is that, why does he say that? He was a two-time college dropout. He was writing formulas that nobody understood around him. It was like, he might as well have been living in a desert.
21:29 Eugene Mirman? Did he ever finish college the third time?
21:32 Speaker 05 No.
21:32 Eugene Mirman? He never finished college?
21:33 Speaker 05 Yeah.
21:34 Eugene Mirman? Why are we even listening to this?
21:38 Speaker 05 Because we got this great film and...
21:40 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. I understand why. You can be quite good without college.
21:45 Speaker 05 Right, so imagine, this was early in the film where he's trying to describe what he does to his wife. And he's frustrated. Nobody has ever met, understood anything he ever wrote down. And he's just desperate. "I'm writing down these formulas and I hope to one day in my life, meet someone that understands me."
22:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so these are the colors that we cannot see.
22:05 Speaker 05 That's right.
22:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That most people cannot see.
22:06 Speaker 05 Right, and that's how he chooses to describe.
22:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yet there's nonetheless an underlying beauty to be revealed later.
22:10 Speaker 05 For him, and he hopes that he can find someone that shares that.
22:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? More on math, the language of the universe, when StarTalk returns.
22:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk, from the Hall of the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with actor Jeremy Irons and director Matt Brown from the film "The Man Who Knew Infinity." And this film is about a self-taught math genius from India and an English math professor. And so I had to ask Jeremy about that special relationship that he had to create in that film. Let's check it out.
22:59 Speaker 01 We tend to sort of, rather generalize black and white in relationships. But there's a myriad of types of relationship. And this was, I think, a very heartfelt, you could say, father-son. I don't know, it wasn't really that. But it was the relationship of two men who had the same dreams, who had the same passions for their subject. And that brings you really close to somebody. He describes it as being the greatest, well, the only romantic period of his life. But I think that was romance.
23:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, it was a different idea of romantic.
23:36 Speaker 01 Sexual romance. Yeah, of course, of course. It was romance for sharing a dream. And a time of his life when there was color and brilliance that later on in life he looks back on as having been
23:48 Speaker 05 Yeah.
23:49 Speaker 01 the great period of his life.
23:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Ken, it's an intellectual romance.
23:54 Speaker 05 It is.
23:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's kind of what makes it a more interesting story to tell. Otherwise...
23:58 Speaker 05 That's really what the film is about.
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what it's doing and why you have someone, the likes of Jeremy Irons, to portray.
24:04 Speaker 05 It's great, isn't it?
24:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's great, just hearing him talk.
24:07 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:07 Eugene Mirman? He seems very charming. I would like to be his friend.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what else can you tell us about Romanogen's relationship with G.H. Hardy?
24:17 Speaker 05 Well, it's actually a very complicated relationship.
24:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And do we know about this relationship?
24:21 Speaker 05 We know a lot about it.
24:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From Romanogen's writings, or is it from G.H. Hardy's writings?
24:24 Speaker 05 From both.
24:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Both.
24:25 Eugene Mirman? Did they share a diary?
24:27 Speaker 05 No, they did not share a diary. But many of the letters between them still survive. So it's actually very interesting. At first, Romanogen needed help from his mentor Hardy. And at first Hardy viewed himself as the great Cambridge professor who could offer that help. But over time Hardy began to recognize more than just Romanogen's creativity, his sheer, the volume of the work that he could produce. So that relationship went from mentor-student to almost being like equal partners, teammates. And it's beautifully told in this film that human element is something you can't deny, right? It's not about...
25:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is the great transition that someone makes. And it's not always easy. And not everyone survives that transition. They can't...
25:14 Speaker 05 That's right.
25:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They can't make that change from learning to the one who then becomes the teacher.
25:20 Speaker 05 That's right, that's right.
25:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you turned out okay.
25:24 Speaker 05 Thank you very much.
25:25 Eugene Mirman? From the limited information we have.
25:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eugene, do comedians mentor other comedians?
25:32 Eugene Mirman? Very much so, yeah. Yeah, cuz you-
25:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So is this someone you can claim that we can look to and say, "Hey, that's a Eugene prodigy"?
25:39 Eugene Mirman? Jerry Seinfeld is someone I helped out a lot.
25:45 Eugene Mirman? No, but there's a lot of comics, like Patton Oswalt helped me a lot, David Cross, Michael Showalter, and David Wayne, Michael Ian Black, a lot of people. And then there's comics that you bring on the road with you. So yeah, that's very much the world of comedy, is a lot of people sort of helping each other.
26:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, Jeremy Irons plays math mentor in The Man Who Knew Infinity. And I had to ask him, how did he prepare for that role? Let's find out. As an actor, when you play someone who is learned, or is a scientist, in ways that you are not that, what do you reach for to make it happen? Well, you gotta read all the books that he read. I mean, how does this work?
26:23 Speaker 01 Well, we had Ken Ono. And I said to Ken, cuz great mathematician, I said to Ken-
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, as an advisor?
26:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's right.
26:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? See, this is a trend line. You know, there was a day that didn't happen. Where people make movies and they just make stuff up.
26:39 Speaker 01 I know.
26:39 Speaker 07 Ken was incredible. I sent out an email to five different mathematicians. They all wrote back in five minutes. And Ken was on an airplane three days later, came to England and made sure every single piece of writing in the movie was right and accurate. And I think it gave these guys the-
26:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they know I'm gonna be tweeting about the movie, and I'm gonna be calling them out if they can make an-
26:58 Speaker 01 That's right.
26:59 Speaker 07 No, they bad for it.
27:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, you've got to, when you have to pretend to be able to do things that you know nothing about, you've gotta have something saying, "That is right. Believe me, that is right. What you're doing is right. That makes sense." Because you don't know, you can't tell. I mean, I know if it's something emotional, I know whether it's true or not, or whatever. I can judge that. So it was great to have Ken on this. And it gave me the confidence to say what I was saying, knowing that it was true and it was right.
27:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Ken, you got a good shout out in that segment.
27:32 Eugene Mirman? I liked that very much.
27:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We got the man himself in studio.
27:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, did you enjoy that experience?
27:40 Speaker 05 Oh, I loved it. Um, you know, I have no experience in film, so, uh, all of it was new to me and I have a much greater appreciation now for how hard it is to make a film, produce a film, and then promote a film. It's been really interesting. And by the way, both Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons, they were great students. So, they know a lot more than they pretend in these interviews. They're, they really elevate.
28:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, how do you coach someone who knows no math to sound fluent in math?
28:08 Speaker 05 We spent a lot of time in rehearsals talking about math, talking about-
28:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How to pronounce all the equations?
28:14 Speaker 05 Oh, my god, we, yeah.
28:15 Eugene Mirman? Did you have to teach, like, the, teach the math? Like, meaning, did they actually learn a fair amount of math? Or were, or not?
28:22 Speaker 05 None. They learned, they didn't learn any real mathematics from me.
28:25 Eugene Mirman? Well, in some movies, like, a person needs to learn how to-
28:28 Speaker 05 They're actors, they're actors.
28:29 Eugene Mirman? But in some movies, like, when someone's acting as, like, a drummer, they learned to drum. I get that if it's a movie of-
28:35 Speaker 05 Is that true?
28:36 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:36 Speaker 05 Okay.
28:37 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, because that would be better than a guy doing this. But you're like, why does it still sound like music? But I guess with math-
28:45 Speaker 05 Uh, yeah, no, no, no.
28:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but they've got it, they've got it, their, their, their phrasings of math expressions-
28:51 Speaker 05 Exactly.
28:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Has to come out right.
28:52 Speaker 05 We spent hours reworking about a dozen scenes just to get the language right, get the intonation of the sentences right. Even, we even practiced at a chalkboard how to write formulas so that you would emphasize the right, right strokes in equations. Most people probably won't notice this in the film, but mathematicians who've seen the film, they adore and embrace this part.
29:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, more, more likely, if you see a film where a person was not coached in how to write the equation-
29:19 Speaker 05 That's obvious.
29:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, it's completely obvious.
29:21 Eugene Mirman? How about, uh, Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting? How are his equations? Ooh.
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, this is not the first time. I mean, we, we've got a list of movies that have featured mathematicians specifically, or, or scientists in general. So, so, we've got A Beautiful Mind, it was a mathematician, and The Theory of Everything, with Stephen Hawking and The Imitation Game, and-
29:44 Speaker 05 They're all great films.
29:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, these are all great films. These are not just, just obscure indie films with, with nobody starring in them.
29:50 Speaker 05 That's right. There's a demand for these films. There's-
29:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think there's a demand that people thought there never could be-
29:55 Speaker 05 Exactly.
29:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because people kept saying, "I don't like math."
29:57 Speaker 05 Right.
29:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so-
29:58 Speaker 05 There's a great story behind everybody. Everybody that's successful, there's a great story behind them.
30:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, more on math in the movies when StarTalk returns.
30:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk. We're here in the Hall of the Universe beneath the Hayden Sphere of the American Museum of Natural History. And we're featuring my interview with actor Jeremy Irons. And I asked him about his own experience with math and science in his years in school. Just, I was just curious. Let's check it out.
30:34 Speaker 01 As far as science was concerned, I was completely hopeless. I mean, I remember in my biology, I was put in the front row. I hated being in the front row because, you know, you were in direct contact with the person who was teaching you. And I would have an earphone in my hand. I had one of these first transistors, because I'm very ill, so transistors sort of came out when I was young. Uh, radio. And it was smallish, and I had the earphone, and I was listening to the tennis.
31:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In other words, you're not paying attention in class?
31:02 Speaker 01 Not at all. But I was doing very badly. But at prep school, I discovered a meteorite as I was walking back from the games. Sadly, I didn't put it in my pocket. It was quite large. I was an honest man. I gave it to the headmaster. And it was sort of, I don't know where it went. It went to a museum or something. But I wish I could...
31:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Incredible.
31:25 Speaker 01 It is, isn't it?
31:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. And just so you can relive the moment when you discovered a meteorite in the flowerbed of your prep school many moons ago. I have a meteorite that you can touch, but you're not, but you only, I'm not going to hand it to you because I don't know what you're going to do with it.
31:41 Speaker 01 I'll be very careful of it. I'll be very respectful.
31:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is four and a half billion years old.
31:47 Speaker 01 What? Whoa. Whoa, now what, why I'm amazed by this. Is this a part of a meteorite?
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. It is part, he's a clever man here. You hired the right guy for your movie. This is part of a meteorite that was the size of that sphere, of the Hayden Sphere. Most of which vaporized on impact with Earth. Fragments got strewn around, and the crater that was made by the parent of this is still around, and you can find it in Arizona, and it's called Meteor Crater.
32:19 Speaker 01 Have you analyzed this?
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's mostly iron, about 90% iron, 10% nickel. A common in the kind of meteorite that this is. Now, here's something to think about. If you, let you feel that.
32:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Imagine that just falling from the ceiling and hitting you in the head. Then your head is a pile of goo, right? Now imagine something the size of that sphere and it's gonna make a crater a mile across. Now imagine something the size of Mount Everest moving at 10 miles per second. And you can judge how devastating that can be to our ecosystem.
32:50 Speaker 01 Did it affect the tilt?
32:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, on that level, it's like a gnat flying into the buttocks of an elephant.
33:01 Speaker 01 A gnat flying into the butt of an elephant. We had some elephants on our movie. One walked off set, actually.
33:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, really?
33:10 Speaker 01 Probably a gnat in the butt.
33:14 Speaker 01 That's really good.
33:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jeremy did find his path in acting, but in fact, he did have some scientific aspirations growing up. He did, he did, he did.
33:29 Speaker 01 I believe you.
33:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's check it out.
33:32 Speaker 01 I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up.
33:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Large animal or small animal?
33:37 Speaker 01 Both, actually. But you have to study the sciences for that. You have to be good at that. And I showed no aptitude at all.
33:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've even played an animal.
33:45 Speaker 01 I have. I played Scar.
33:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If he can play an animal in a Disney movie, he can play anything.
33:53 Speaker 01 Pretty much.
33:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pretty much. Cast that guy as a mathematician, I think.
33:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what that means...
34:00 Speaker 01 That was actually very upsetting, I want to just mention before we skate over it, Scar. Because, you know, they come when you're recording. I always thought they drew the pictures and then you added the words, but they don't. You do the words and then they draw...
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They draw to your...
34:14 Speaker 01 That's right.
34:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To your words.
34:15 Speaker 01 And as you're trying out these lines, they're there with the artists, they're there, they're sketching, and there are people with videos and all of that. And then I saw the film, and I mean, James Earl Jones, you remember him? Well, James Earl Jones plays...
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mufasa.
34:30 Speaker 01 Mufasa.
34:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mufasa.
34:32 Speaker 01 And as he walks, his muscles ripple and his mane...
34:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He strives.
34:39 Speaker 01 He strives. Oh, it's wonderful. And then on comes Scar. Have you seen such a mangy beast? I mean, bald spots in his mane, ribs sticking out, the most...
34:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And in fact, a scar, yes.
34:52 Speaker 01 That's right. And that was what they'd been copying when I was recording. And I thought, this is... I felt very upset. So I like to skate over the scarf.
35:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, up next, we're gonna take your questions about the universal language of mathematics when StarTalk returns.
35:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk. American Museum of Natural History on Central Park West in New York City. We're talking about the beauty of math. And now it's time for the fan favorite Cosmic Queries segment. Yeah, and this is where we solicit questions from our social media. I have not seen them. No. But I brought backup in case I can't answer them. Yeah. So if I can't, I'll just say, "I can't answer it, let's go to Ken." Yeah. And I might go to Ken anyway, even if I can't answer, because he'll be able to answer it better. Because these are about math and he's the mathematician. Okay. We got that, Ken?
36:03 Speaker 05 We're good, we're good.
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We good?
36:05 Speaker 05 We're good. Just make sure I don't have to answer any questions.
36:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. All right. Gene, go for it.
36:09 Eugene Mirman? Let's do it. Kim Hanakin from Ukiah, California says, "Is there any cosmic significance to the Fibonacci sequence?"
36:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, good, good.
36:19 Speaker 05 Lovely question.
36:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I love me some Fibonacci.
36:21 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah.
36:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, who doesn't love Fibonacci? Right. Fibonacci numbers, each number is the sum of the two previous numbers. So you have, uh, zero, one, zero?
36:30 Speaker 05 One, one, two, three.
36:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One, one, two, three, five.
36:33 Speaker 05 And it's related to the topic of the day, Ramanujan. The Fibonacci sequence, if you take their consecutive ratios, they converge to a beautiful number called the golden ratio.
36:43 Eugene Mirman? What's the golden ratio?
36:45 Speaker 05 Well, it's one plus the square of five over two.
36:48 Eugene Mirman? Ah, ah.
36:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Duh.
36:49 Speaker 05 But it's the dimensions of the Mona Lisa and the Parthenon and even the cross-section of the chambered nautilus are said to embody this particular number. Why is it important?
36:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you get that from the Fibonacci series.
37:00 Speaker 05 You get that from the Fibonacci series. And the beautiful thing about this, that number is one of the special numbers that Ramanujan generalized in the letter he wrote to Hardy. And in fact, that's like the very last line of Ramanujan's first letter to Hardy that started all of this. Wonderful question.
37:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
37:16 Speaker 05 That's a cosmic question.
37:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice, yeah, I'll give you that. Gene, next question.
37:20 Eugene Mirman? Ricardo from Southwick, Massachusetts asks, "Neil, is math invented or discovered?"
37:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, Ken.
37:28 Speaker 05 Are you gonna answer any questions? Oh, that's an awesome question.
37:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As long as you're here, I'm handing it over to you.
37:32 Speaker 05 I'm here, I can take it.
37:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is my little baseball bat.
37:34 Speaker 05 Great question, so the formulas are there, right? Pure mathematics, things that you can prove already exist. It's the job of the mathematicians to find it.
37:44 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, I agree.
37:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I will supplement that, if I may.
37:47 Eugene Mirman? Yeah?
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I would say that, in the same way in quantum physics.
37:52 Speaker 05 Yes.
37:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We can have a particle that is simultaneously a wave, but we don't happen to have a word to describe them both at the same time, because we cannot wrap our head around that fact. I would say that to argue whether math is invented or discovered is simply a limitation of our language to find the actual word for what math actually is when we extract it from the universe. So, so why force it to go into one of those words or the other? Why not invent a new word that applies to math and get on with it?
38:25 Speaker 05 Okay.
38:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eugene, okay.
38:28 Eugene Mirman? Mark, as far as that, from Grand Prairie, Texas asks, "Would math be the first universal language that we could actually use to communicate with aliens before anything else?"
38:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm taking this.
38:40 Eugene Mirman? I'm taking it. Yes.
38:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I would say yes. The problem is the symbols we use will not match their symbols, so we'd have to figure out what the configuration of the representations are. Maybe we can map, it's a cryptographic problem, that is not impossible. We've done it for things that are pretty hard. I would say it would be mathematics as well as certain fundamental truths about science. The structure of the periodic table of elements, the equations of motion and of gravity. We should see things that look something like that with the aliens. And then, then they slaughter us. Yeah, after we find that out.
39:18 Eugene Mirman? Unless, yeah.
39:19 Speaker 05 Actually, I'm totally with you on that.
39:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, alright.
39:21 Speaker 05 Okay, well, yeah.
39:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh no, sorry, what were you gonna say?
39:23 Speaker 05 What I was gonna say was just like the premise of the film Contact, remember when they sent the message out?
39:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, in the movie it was-
39:30 Speaker 05 The movie contact was a sequence of prime numbers-
39:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Prime numbers.
39:32 Speaker 05 Was the universal language?
39:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
39:34 Speaker 05 Before they've beamed back the blueprints for the special machine?
39:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except the sequence of numbers, the prime numbers were in base 10.
39:41 Speaker 05 That's right. Which is an interesting problem.
39:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
39:43 Speaker 05 Right, right.
39:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Would they have 10 fingers and then invent counting in base 10? Yeah. Okay, next, go!
39:47 Eugene Mirman? Okay. Christopher from Miami, Florida asks: "We typically assume that math is universal and unchanging. However, is there any conceivable time or place where 2 plus 2 equals 5? Say within an alien psychology or logic?"
40:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ken?
40:04 Speaker 05 No.
40:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
40:05 Eugene Mirman? But what if the aliens super sad or crazy?
40:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Eugene, I agree with Ken. No.
40:13 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
40:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next question.
40:13 Eugene Mirman? No, I do too.
40:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
40:17 Eugene Mirman? Corey from Mentor, Ohio: "Why do you think the US is falling behind other countries in math scores? Are we adding wrong?"
40:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
40:29 Eugene Mirman? That last part is mine.
40:30 Speaker 05 Neil.
40:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why do we think, why do I think we're falling behind?
40:35 Eugene Mirman? In math scores.
40:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I have some ideas, but this, we're talking about test scores and-
40:40 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
40:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the statistics on this and where we fit relative to the rest of the world. And anytime I, I need data such as that, I need Mona. Mona, can I get some data, please?
40:54 Speaker 08 Hi Neil.
40:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everyone, this is Mona Chalabi and she's a data journalist with The Guardian. Tonight, we want to hear some insights on the United States students' performance in mathematics relative to the world. Let's hear it.
41:06 Speaker 08 So Neil, we know that whether you grew up in England or India, culture can affect your performance in maths. And it looks like you're right, the US is falling behind. Chinese students top the list by a long way, but there might be a reason why Chinese students just find this stuff easier. And it comes down to our number systems. So in the Chinese language, the words for numbers are super short. Seven is ki, one hundred is bei. And research shows that that can make it easier for Chinese students to memorize a string of numbers. And if you can learn to count at a younger age, that can make the complex math, once you get older, a little bit easier too.
41:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa.
41:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa. So, does that, okay. So that explains why the Chinese do so well, above average. Why does it explain why Americans do so badly below average?
41:54 Speaker 08 Well, so below the average, they're not that far below the average, but there are a couple of different possible reasons for that. One criticism of that massive international test is that the philosophies of learning really vary by country, right? So it's normally a multiple choice test. And if US students are raised to have a different approach to multiple choice tests, for example, maybe it's part of American culture to just try and have a shot at every question instead of kind of working very slowly and methodically as, say, German or Dutch students do. And that can affect the comparability of these different results in different countries, too.
42:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whoa, so what you're saying is that this international test, because Americans aren't doing well on it, it's biased against Americans?
42:37 Speaker 08 I wouldn't go that far.
42:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'll go that far. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I said it. I said it.
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so I'm fascinated by this. So this might tell us that in our, in our, in our school system, we might encourage counting as a very, we already do, but try to find another way to make it a fundamental part of what it is to go through childhood and toddlerhood.
43:03 Speaker 08 Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, emotion comes into it as well. You mentioned earlier on in the show that a lot of people say they hate math. They're just not good at it. And that can create a real mental block to learning as well.
43:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, thank you, Mona, for bringing some data to the question.
43:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, coming up, Bill Nye the Science Guy explains how and why math is all around us when StarTalk returns.
43:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back to StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with actor Jeremy Irons and film director Matt Brown of the film The Man Who Knew Infinity. And in this last clip, I asked about just the reflections on the life story of the self-taught Indian genius Ramana John.
44:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you have any reflections on the notion of being self-taught?
44:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, my instinct is that we get our education completely wrong in that regard. I mean, the more I see about education, I see people answering tick boxes, which to me is...
44:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Multiple choice.
44:18 Speaker 01 Multiple choice, which has nothing to do with it. That what we should be trying to do with our kids, with everybody, is saying, "What do you think? Okay, follow that. Where does that go to? Follow that. Just go off on your... Just think..."
44:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Explore.
44:34 Speaker 01 That we should encourage people to find their own thoughts. We have to, if we're to survive and really expand as a globe, we have to think with original thought, and original thought, I think, must be encouraged.
44:52 Speaker 07 His character, actually, in the film, G.H. Hardy, he tried to eradicate the tri-post exam system at Trinity. I think he was successful to a degree, which was, at that time, sort of a standardized test that they would do for about two years, and then they would decide who was the best mathematician. And it took a man like that to bring Ramana Jain and recognize this outlier. And I think that's a really big point.
45:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So these are correlated facts, that he sees that this test is not serving
45:19 Speaker 07 He said...
45:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The growth of human curiosity.
45:21 Speaker 07 Yeah, he said, "What a waste of time."
45:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he can see somebody...
45:24 Speaker 07 He was a really... He was a very forward-thinking person to be able to do that. And one of them, I mean, if I have a message of the movie, is that, you know, the fact that these two could open up their hearts and be able to be open, to be able to recognize outliers.
45:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ken, how do we do that today? How do we find the outlier?
45:42 Speaker 05 Well, science usually proceeds by the work of thousands, but every once in a while, there's a fireball like Ramana Jain who propels human thought forward. We are searching the world, just like SETI is scanning the skies for extraterrestrial life. We're gonna scan our cities, our villages, for mathematical talent. Science is becoming increasingly important to our future, so we just always need to be searching.
46:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, before we wrap this up, we must get an update from our man, Bill Nye the Science Guy, in a segment I like to call "Nye Times in the City." Let's check him out.
46:23 Bill Nye? Mathematics is how we know nature. Just look around. Look at all the right angles. When you see a tree growing straight out of the ground, or a building built up from the street, you're looking at right angles. They're orthogonal to a plane, tangential to the Earth's surface, if the Earth were a perfect sphere. That's simple enough. Now, here in Manhattan, the streets are laid out, at first, following bunny trails. But as human influence grew, we set up a street grid, roughly parallel to the shores of the island. Where you live, the grid's probably north and south, east and west. It's a whole pack of right angles. And now, when I look at the famous Flatiron Building, here in New York City, not only do I see the right angle of the building being built up from the street,
47:08 Bill Nye? but the length of each of the sides is described perfectly by the Pythagorean theorem. The sum of the squares of the two short sides equals the square of the long side. The hypotenuse. It's beautiful. It's the result of centuries of mathematical investigation by countless geniuses. Wait, countless. Does that mean that there's a finite number of geniuses that we just haven't counted yet? Or is the number countless? Is there an infinite number of geniuses just waiting to emerge? Whoa. Oh. Either way, it all adds up. It's not magic, it's mathematic.
47:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, when I think of this show and all that we've discussed, what I reflect upon is every time I walk by a homeless person, a poor child who can only worry about where the next meal is coming from, could there be an Isaac Newton sitting there, in front of me? Could there be a Marie Curie that lays undiscovered before us? And so...
48:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My sadness is when I ask myself, "How many people among the 7 billion on this earth are not participants in the moving frontier of scientific and mathematical discovery? What great riches of mind, body, and soul remain unrevealed to us? Because the entire population of the world is not a participant in this grand adventure." This has been StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
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