The Art of Mathematics
The Art of Mathematics
Carol Jacoby
Approximation by Rationals: A New Focus
21 minutes Posted Oct 26, 2022 at 9:00 pm.
0:00
21:35
Download MP3
Show notes

Joseph Bennish, Prof. Emeritus of CSULB, describes the field of Diophantine approximation, which started in the 19th Century with questions about how well irrational numbers can be approximated by rationals. It took Cantor and Lebesgue to develop new ways to talk about the sizes of infinite sets to give the 20th century new ways to think about it. This led up to the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture and this year's Fields Medal for James Maynard.