BBC FOUR celebrates mathematics - Tuesday 6 December

BBC FOUR celebrates mathematics and the beauty of numbers with a series of programmes about this most precise and exacting of all intellectual disciplines. Throughout the night, the channel will show films that offer insights into the minds of great mathematicians, and reveal the stories behind some of the great mathematical breakthroughs.

The BBC's celebration of mathematics has a strong Oxford flavour: Marcus du Sautoy presents `Music of the Primes'; `Breaking the Code' draws on Andrew Hodges' biography of Alan Turing; many of the mathematical ideas in Escher's work were suggested by Roger Penrose; and of course Andrew Wiles was an Oxford undergraduate.

21:05 Go Forth and Multiply

Starting a night of numbers on BBC Four, have you heard of the mathematical system that cancels out certain numbers because they're `unlucky' - and ignores fractions altogether? From time immemorial, merchants in Ethiopia have used a system of multiplication that seems bizarre - but it works.

21:10 Music of the Primes

Prime numbers - those figures which refuse to be divided neatly by anything other than one and themselves - are fundamental to mathematics. Yet they seem to surface entirely randomly along the number line. But are the primes truly random - or is there some hidden pattern? Marcus DuSautoy investigates the fascinating story of the great mathematicians who've grappled with the problem of the primes.

Website: http://www.open2.net/musicoftheprimes/

22:10 Phi's the Limit: The Golden Ratio

What do the nautilus seashell, the Great Pyramid, and The Mona Lisa have in common? They are all feature Phi - otherwise known as The Golden Ratio.

22:15 Breaking the Code

The mathematical genius Alan Turing was responsible for cracking Germany's Enigma Code - enabling the Allies to decipher messages sent by the Nazis to their forces. Derek Jacobi, Prunella Scales, Richard Johnson, Amanda Root and Harold Pinter star in this absorbing drama, revealing how one of Britain's greatest mathematicians changed the course of the Second World War.

23:45 The Mathematical Art of MC Escher

Of all major artists of the 20th Century, none was more influenced by maths than the Dutch artist MC Escher. Throughout his career, this superb draughtsman produced images that explored (and exploited) mathematical ideas.

23:50 Horizon: Fermat's Last Theorem

As a 10-year old schoolboy, Andrew Wiles stumbled across Fermat's Last Theorem - one of the world's greatest mathematical puzzles. This edition of Horizon tells the story of Wiles' quest to solve a problem that had baffled the greatest mathematicians for more than three centuries.

24:40 Music of the Primes

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