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Hello, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaree declared, the scientist doesn't

study mathematics because it's useful.

He studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it's beautiful. If nature were not

beautiful it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living and it's

because simplicity because grandia is beautiful that we preferably seek

simple facts, sublime facts and that we preferably seek simple facts,

sublime facts and that we delight now

to follow the majestic course of the stars.

And Poankare's groundbreaking work in the 19th and early 20th century

has indeed led us to the stars on the consideration of the

shape of the universe itself. He's known as the father of topology, that is, the

study of the properties of shapes and how they can be deformed. His famous conjecture

in this field has been causing mathematicians sleepless nights ever since.

He is also credited as the father of Chaos Theory.

So how did this great polymath change the way we understand the world and indeed the universe?

Why did this conjecture remain unproved

for almost a century and has it finally been cracked?

Join me to illuminate these questions, I'm Marcus Usoe, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics

at Warwick University, and June Barra Green, lecturer in the History of Mathematics at the Open

University.

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