Dangerous Knowledge

In order to break the stream of posts helping me vent my frustration about Hellenic politics and the upcoming elections in that country, here’s an excellent documentary by the BBC (who else?). Its subject matter covers the work and lives of some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the last 200 years and specifically those of Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. A common theme among them is the fact that they all committed suicide. The documentary vaguely attempts to link their prolific scientific and intellectual output and the primitive social environment in which they lived to their death, something which while possible, is vastly more complex correlation to what is presented in this documentary. Still, it is an interesting presentation, especially for those interested in the biographical details of these brilliant thinkers.