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It’s round. It has a hole in it. It symbolises nothing and yet it is the possibility of something... meet zero.
The zero we know and love today is the foundation of our modern world. And we have India to thank for it; in particular one special Indian birch bark book the Bakhshali manuscript.
This is the story of how these fragile pages travelled to Oxford University and what their future looks like.
Credits:
- Presenter: Marc Fennell
- ABC RN Producer: Zoe Ferguson
- ABC RN Executive Producer: Amruta Slee
- CBC Senior Producer: Tina Verma
- CBC Executive Producers: Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke
- Sound Engineer: Martin Peralta
Guests:
- Marcus du Sautoy - Professor of Mathematics and Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford
- Clemency Montelle - Professor of Mathematics, University of Canterbury
- Ayesha Jalal - Professor of History, Tufts University
- Nisid Hajari - Author, Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition
- Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay - Professor of Mathematics, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College
- Jonathan Crabtree - Freelance maths historian
This podcast is a co-production of ABC Australia and CBC Podcasts
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