Hi - I think I watched this documentary a while ago. I watched only a few minutes of it today and then realized that I should probably be doing something else. However, I was interested and want to comment briefly.
In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
From what I can gather in this summary and my recollection of the film, the
I am not sure what it means for one's genius to drive him or her insane. director seems to exploit the illnesses of some of these men to provide some theatrical drama to the story. If this is so, then it seems rather irresponsible. If I am mistaken and have not watched enough of the video, then my apologies to the director.
The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.
This statement does not directly blame the illness on his struggle with mathematics, but it seems dangerously suggestive of this conclusion. Here is a quote from Wikipedia: Cantor's recurring bouts of depression<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_depression>from 1884 to the end of his life were once blamed on the hostile attitude of many of his contemporaries,[9]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor#cite_note-daub280-8>but these episodes can now be seen as probable manifestations of a bipolar disorder <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder>.[10]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor#cite_note-bipolar-9> This seems like the more reasonable, albeit possibly less glamorous description of the causes of Cantor's illnesses. Since I did not watch further I cannot comment on the others, except that I did not know of any mental disorders associated to Turing. Best, Alex Hoffnung [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]