Video Lectures
58 biographical documentaries on the greatest mathematicians in history
These videos come from two curated YouTube playlists covering mathematicians from antiquity to the 20th century. Most documentaries are available in French with English subtitles; some are natively in English.
Antiquity & Medieval
Before Newton and Einstein There Was Diophantus — The Father of Algebra
Diophantus (c. 200–284 CE)
Apollonius of Perga — The Father of Conics Who Inspired Newton and Kepler
Apollonius of Perga (c. 240–190 BCE)
Aryabhata: The Indian Genius Who Preceded NASA by a Thousand Years
Aryabhata (476–550 CE)
Who Was Fibonacci? The Surprising Story of the Golden Sequence Mathematician
Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250)
The Merchant Who Discovered God's Secret Code Hidden in Nature
Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250)
The 400-Year Secret: Why Leonardo Fibonacci Was Forgotten (Part 2)
Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250)
Early Modern Period (1500–1700)
The Story of Johannes Kepler — The Father of Planetary Orbit
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
Blaise Pascal: The Child Prodigy Who Humiliated the Mathematicians of His Time
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
Isaac Newton: The Last of the Magicians or the First Scientist?
Isaac Newton (1643–1727)
Gottfried Leibniz: The Philosopher Who Invented Calculus
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
He Invented Your Calculator and Died Alone in Poverty — The Betrayal of Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
Gambler, Heretic, Mathematician: The Scandalous Life of Gerolamo Cardano
Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576)
The Duel for the Equation — Loyalty, Betrayal, and the Price of Genius
Cardano & Tartaglia — the cubic equation
The Secret Number That BROKE Math and Saved Science (Napier & Logarithms)
John Napier (1550–1617)
The Man Who Ended Human Exhaustion (Before Calculators Existed)
Logarithms & computation
He Wrote One Line — and Haunted Mathematics for 350 Years
Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665)
He Failed the Greatest Math Problem — and Changed the World Forever
Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665)
18th Century Masters
The Man Who Saw Infinity — The Story of Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler (1707–1783)
The Story of Pierre-Simon Laplace — The French Newton Who Revolutionized Science
Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827)
From Orphanhood to Academia: The Turbulent Life of Fourier
Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)
Fourier Transform: The Most Important Formula in the Universe?
The Fourier Transform — concept video
Johann Bernoulli Humiliated Newton in 24 Hours (The Greatest Math Flex Ever)
Johann Bernoulli (1667–1748)
He Discovered the Number That Runs Your Phone — Then His Brother Destroyed Him
The Bernoulli Brothers
He Bought His Way Into EVERY Math Textbook (The L'Hopital Scandal)
Guillaume de L'Hopital (1661–1704)
Lost 2 Wives in Childbirth, Died Forgotten... Then This Happened (Taylor Series)
Brook Taylor (1685–1731)
He Predicted The Exact Date Of His Own Death — Using Mathematics
Abraham de Moivre (1667–1754)
19th Century — Algebra & Number Theory
Carl Friedrich Gauss: The Prince of Mathematicians and his Universal Legacy
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855)
The Fantastic Story of Gauss, the Greatest Mathematician Who Ever Lived!
Carl Friedrich Gauss — second portrait
The Impossible Equation: How Abel Changed Mathematics Before the Age of 26
Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829)
Who was Évariste Galois? The genius rejected by Gauss.
Évariste Galois (1811–1832)
The Mathematics the World Tried to Silence: Who Was Sophie Germain?
Sophie Germain (1776–1831)
The Life of Jacobi: The Genius Behind Modern Mathematics
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (1804–1851)
The Fascinating Life of Dirichlet — The Genius Who Created Number Theory
Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805–1859)
19th Century — Geometry & Analysis
How Bernhard Riemann Changed Mathematics Forever
Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866)
Weierstrass: The Father of Mathematical Analysis
Karl Weierstrass (1815–1897)
Who Was Richard Dedekind? The Genius Who Revolutionized Modern Mathematics
Richard Dedekind (1831–1916)
Arthur Cayley: The Father of Abstract Algebra and His Brilliant Discoveries
Arthur Cayley (1821–1895)
William Rowan Hamilton — The Man Who Invented Quaternions
William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865)
Discover How János Bolyai Revolutionized Non-Euclidean Geometry
János Bolyai (1802–1860)
The Mathematician Who Accidentally Changed Physics: The Life of Julius Plücker
Julius Plücker (1801–1868)
The Mathematician the World Ignored: The Story of Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Grassmann (1809–1877)
Without Him, Quantum Mechanics Would Be Impossible: Sophus Lie
Sophus Lie (1842–1899)
Felix Klein: The Mathematician Who Redefined All of Modern Geometry
Felix Klein (1849–1925)
Charles Hermite: The Mathematician Who Mastered the Transcendent
Charles Hermite (1822–1901)
The "Russian Newton": Who Was Pafnuty Lvovich Chebyshev?
Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821–1894)
Turn of the Century (Late 19th – Early 20th)
The Genius Who Anticipated the 20th Century — The Story of Élie Cartan
Élie Cartan (1869–1951)
Émile Borel: The Genius Behind Probability Theory
Émile Borel (1871–1956)
The Incredible Story of Giuseppe Peano — The Genius Behind Modern Logic
Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932)
Who Was Carl Ludwig Siegel? The Master of Number Theory
Carl Ludwig Siegel (1896–1981)
20th Century & Computing
Pure Mathematics vs. The World: The Tragic Story of Hardy
G.H. Hardy (1877–1947)
Ramanujan: The Genius Who "Heard" the Gods of Mathematics
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920)
The Genius Haunted by Logic: The Tragic Life of Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel (1906–1978)
The Genius Who Invented AI in 1906: The Story of Andrei Markov
Andrei Markov (1856–1922)
From Chaos to Order: The Immortal Legacy of Kolmogorov
Andrey Kolmogorov (1903–1987)
John von Neumann: The Most Intelligent Man Who Ever Lived?
John von Neumann (1903–1957)
The Useless Machine: The Dark and Fun Side of the Father of the Digital Age
Alan Turing — the lighter side
Alan Turing: The Man Who Solved the Enigma Code and Invented the Future
Alan Turing (1912–1954)
Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: The True Story of the Origin of Software
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) & Ada Lovelace (1815–1852)