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2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre and the Dayton Accords resolution of the first two (Croatia and Bosnia) of the three Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Number theory is the branch of mathematics that’s primarily concerned with our counting numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc., and in particular the prime numbers, the ‘building blocks’ of our number system. The subject dates back to the ancient Greeks and is notable for its intrinsic beauty and elegance.
In 1920, Nellie Melba’s singing was transmitted to Europe and Newfoundland via the wireless. In 1922 the BBC began broadcasting, and from the outset sponsored new music and relayed outside broadcasts to the nation (and from 1932, to the world).
This final lecture will celebrate some of the great mathematical equations, and related algorithms, which have both changed the world as we know it and which are likely to change it in the future.
Mathematics and art are more similar than is commonly thought. Each is concerned with the process of being highly creative with abstract objects and of producing everlasting work of great aesthetic beauty.
I will start by looking at the mythology that has gathered around the Golden Ratio, and also consider the fairness of cake-cutting, and changing choices in the Monty Hall problem.
The lecture will show how Prohibition animated combatants on both sides, generating two Americas that were barely comprehensible to each other, and how the truce declared during depression and war would not last.