Workshop season · 30 days
19th-Century Britain & Ireland — The Century of Logic
From quaternions to Boolean algebra, from matrices to the four-color problem. Over 30 days, follow ideas exchanged among Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe. Hamilton conceived quaternion multiplication on a walk, Boole expressed logical relations algebraically, and Lovelace explored what a symbolic engine might do. The finale asks how these currents later met computing.
Start anywhere. Every reading remains available after the season ends.
- Day 1
William Rowan Hamilton
Explore this question →Season opens — conceiving the quaternion relation on a Dublin walk
- Day 2
Vectors and Matrices
Explore this question →Vectors and matrices — languages of space that grew alongside quaternions
- Day 3
Dimension
Explore this question →Dimension itself — Hamilton and Riemann's leap
- Day 4
Ada Lovelace
Explore this question →A table often regarded as the first published algorithm for a computing machine, London 1843
- Day 5
The 1200-Year Journey of the Word "Algorithm"
Explore this question →The 1200-year journey of the word algorithm
- Day 6
George Boole
Explore this question →Algebra for relations among true and false statements — a self-educated teacher from Lincoln
- Day 7
Boolean Algebra
Explore this question →Boolean Algebra — The Laws of Thought, 1854
- Day 8
Set Theory
Explore this question →Set theory — the formalization after Boole
- Day 9
Arthur Cayley
Explore this question →Cayley the London lawyer — systematizing matrix algebra in 1858
- Day 10
Group Theory
Explore this question →Group theory — Britain takes up Galois's spark
- Day 11
Galois's Brief Life — A Genius at 20
Explore this question →Galois’s manuscripts — the last-night myth and the longer research process
- Day 12
Galois Theory
Explore this question →Galois Theory — why the quintic resists
- Day 13
Graph Coloring
Explore this question →1852 London: a student's four-color conjecture
- Day 14
Fermat's Last Theorem — A 358-Year Margin
Explore this question →The 358-year margin — Britain chases Fermat
- Day 15
Knot Theory
Explore this question →Knots as mathematics — Lord Kelvin's 1867 atomic theory
- Day 16
Inclusion-Exclusion Principle
Explore this question →Inclusion-exclusion — Sylvester's British combinatorics
- Day 17
Vector Calculus
Explore this question →The vector calculus that let Maxwell's equations speak
- Day 18
Non-Euclidean Geometry
Explore this question →Parallel lines meet — the biggest shock of the century
- Day 19
Manifold
Explore this question →Riemann's 1854 lecture — birth of the manifold
- Day 20
Bernhard Riemann
Explore this question →Riemann — rethinking space and primes at Göttingen
- Day 21
Riemann Hypothesis — The Enduring Question in a Six-Page Manuscript
Explore this question →The Riemann Hypothesis — six pages, a century and a half
- Day 22
Riemann Hypothesis — The Hunt Since 1859
Explore this question →165 years of chasing — a 60-second cinematic
- Day 23
Complex Analysis
Explore this question →Complex analysis — Riemann's playground
- Day 24
Georg Cantor
Explore this question →Cantor — infinity is not one thing
- Day 25
Cantor's Infinity — What He Saw But Did Not Believe
Explore this question →Infinity even its discoverer doubted
- Day 26
Continuum Hypothesis — Proven Independent of ZFC
Explore this question →The Continuum Hypothesis — independent of ZFC
- Day 27
Four Color Theorem
Explore this question →1976 — the first famous theorem proved with extensive computer assistance, 124 years later
- Day 28
Statistics and Inference
Explore this question →Statistics — Britain in medicine and biology
- Day 29
The Path of Women in Mathematics — 1600 Years of Challenge
Explore this question →1600 years of women mathematicians — Lovelace in lineage
- Day 30
Alan Turing
Explore this question →From seed to computer — Britain 90 years after Boole