Roger Penrose

This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.

Twenty years after A Brief History of Time flummoxed the world with its big numbers and black holes, its author, Stephen Hawking, concedes that the "ultimate theory" he'd believed to be imminent - which would conclusively explain the origins of life, the universe and everything - remains frustratingly elusive. Yet despite his failing health and the seeming impossibility of the task, Hawking is still devoted to his work; an extraordinary drive that's captured here in fleeting interview snippets and footage of the scientist sharing a microwave dinner with some fawning PhD students. Though the pop-science tutorials that dapple the first of this two-part biography are winningly perky, Hawking, alas, remains as tricky to fathom as his boggling quantum whatnots

This documentary explores whether we can use mathematics to describe the observable universe in order to reveal the potential connection to the mysteries of consciousness.

Dutch graphic artist MC Escher created some of the most famous graphic illusions in 20th century popular culture. He inspired artists, designers and film directors. Yet his most profound impact was on a different field to art entirely – mathematics. Cosmologist Professor Sir Roger Penrose is one of the world’s leading mathematicians. His research into black holes with Stephen Hawking transformed our understanding of the big bang. In this film, coinciding with the first ever major UK retrospective of Escher’s work Professor Penrose now reveals how his own mathematical sketches inspired some of Escher’s best-known masterpieces.

Les mathématiques sont-elles une invention ou une découverte, une science propre à l’humanité ou le langage même de l'Univers ? Une enquête vertigineuse sur ce débat à travers l'histoire, de l'Antiquité à nos jours. Omniprésentes dans les sciences et les technologies, les mathématiques sont parvenues à décrypter les orbites elliptiques des planètes, à prédire la découverte du boson de Higgs ou à faire atterrir le robot Curiosity sur Mars. De tous temps, l’homme, en quête de cycles et de motifs, les a utilisées pour explorer le monde physique et pour comprendre les règles de la nature, du nombre de pétales de fleurs (répondant à des « suites ») à la symétrie de notre corps. La réalité possède-t-elle une nature mathématique inhérente ou les mathématiques sont-elles des outils précieux créés par l’esprit humain ?