The Zero Story

Remember that dreaded figure your teacher scrawled on the margin of your math test paper? It’s the hero of this episode.

Our much-villainised zero has a fascinating history. The Babylonians, as we discovered in Episode 1 (Babylon), may have arrived at a placeholder for zero, but the actual symbol did not enter convention until the 7th century in the Indian subcontinent. It later became a foundational element of mathematical concepts during the Islamic Golden Age (the word algebra has Arabic roots). Later, it was adopted in Europe by Renaissance mathematicians.

Long story short: Zero has come full circle.

In this episode, Divakaran and Shraddha host you through the evolution of zero through the ages.

Further reading:

Book | Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman: Read online at OpenLibrary.org - https://urlis.net/pvzgqofb

Full text at Archive.org - https://urlis.net/d68xu7po

Charles Seife: ZERO : THE BIOGRAPHY OF A DANGEROUS IDEA Book | Amazon India: https://urlis.net/w050djz8

YouTube | Full Audio Transcript: https://youtu.be/tgvd1zMtKt0

Credits:

Akshay Ramuhalli, Bijoy Venugopal, Bruce Lee Mani, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Supriya Joshi and Velu Shankar