10126 MATHEMATICAL RAMBLES

Emeritus Professor John Harold Webb, University of Cape Town

All languages have number words, but it is only when numbers are written down that mathematics can be developed. This course will take a leisurely stroll through the number systems and mathematics of Babylon, Egypt, Rome, China, South America, Greece and India, ending up in Africa, where it all started anyway.

In the history of South Africa a number of mathematical people, both great and small, turn up in unexpected places. An erratic ramble will link Alice in Wonderland, the South African War, the numerology of the Great Pyramid, votes for women, colouring maps, schism in the Church of England, UFOs and the biggest unsolved problem in modern mathematics: the Riemann hypothesis.

Archimedes was without doubt the greatest mathematician of antiquity. We will take a brisk walk past some of his finest works. How did he calculate pi, repel the Romans, trisect the angle, weigh the Crown of Syracuse, and invent calculus? How did a medieval prayer book lead to a recent discovery of one of his most intriguing lost works?

LECTURE TITLES
1. Numbers old and new.
2. Highways and byways.
3. The royal road of geometry.