Title from container. "Course no. 1499." -- Disc. 24 lectures in 2 parts (30 minutes per lecture). Accompanying course guidebooks include a glossary and annotated bibliographies. Special features: Lecture chapters; Professor biography.

Part 1. lecture 1. The ever-evolving notion of number -- lecture 2. The dawn of numbers -- lecture 3. Speaking the language of numbers -- lecture 4. The dramatic digits, the power of zero -- lecture 5. The magical and spiritual allure of numbers -- lecture 6. Nature's numbers, patterns without people -- lecture 7. Numbers of prime importance -- lecture 8. Challenging the rationality of numbers -- lecture 9. Walk the (number) line -- lecture 10. The commonplace chaos among real numbers -- lecture 11. A beautiful dusting of zeroes and twos -- lecture 12. An intuitive sojourn into arithmetic -- part 2. lecture 13. The story of [pi] -- lecture 14. The story of Euler's e -- lecture 15. Transcendental numbers -- lecture 16. An algebraic approach to numbers -- lecture 17. The five most important numbers -- lecture 18. An analytic approach to numbers -- lecture 19. A new breed of numbers -- lecture 20. The notion of transfinite numbers -- lecture 21. Collections too infinite to count -- lecture 22. In and out, the road to a third infinity -- lecture 23. Infinity, what we know and what we don't -- lecture 24. The endless frontier of number.

Lecturer: Edward B. Burger, Williams College.

"The 24 lectures of Zero to Infinity: A History of Numbers explore this fascinating question and the equally fascinating history of numbers. Award-winning Professor of Mathematics Edward B. Burger's historical, global, and conceptual approach to numbers gives you not only a revealing tour of mathematical history but shows how and why numbers evolved, as well as the transforming implications of each advance for both mathematics and society"--Publisher's web site.

DVD.