There is a documentary, but I can't attest to its quality (I haven't watched it yet): http://www.zalafilms.com/films/countingabout.html.

Hmm... thanks, it looks quite good.

But why is streaming rental for 24 hours? Why can't we do rentals for two weeks for videos? Is there a good reason to make it so difficult to stream? I don't want to watch it a million times. I just want to make it through once, but it takes me several sittings typically to finish a movie.

I was thinking about watching this documentary two years ago. That sounds like the reason that I decided not to.

Looks like it's available on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/countingfrominfinityyitangzhanga...

> But why is streaming rental for 24 hours?

Money / capitalism.

Sadly, they would probably make it a schmaltzy Oscar-grab of a movie, like they did with Ramanujan's story.

The Eternal Triangle, With Brigitte Bardot playing part of hypotenuse.

Good luck finding a movie about Isaac Newton or Einstein, or literally anyone whose value to the world is more than pretending to be someone else or lying a lot, let alone a very interesting mathematician no one recognizes. (Ok I know there’s a few movies about folks like Turing and Nash, but it’s pretty slim pickings).

There have been many, many films made about Srinivasa Ramanujan. I'd particularly recommend the 2015 one, The Man Who Knew Infinity, I found it super charming.

And the movies about figures like these that do exist seem to have roughly the same story, relying heavily on the "socially inept genius" trope.

There is a tv show about Einstein, well, only the first season is about him.

Which one?

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős is a decent enough documentary about a specific mathematician.

Colors of Math breezes across six contemporary mathematicians.

This whole theme is sort incompatible with movies. Most people like to relate to the characters in the plot. The "genius guy" does something we can't understand has very little appeal as a story.

Same thing goes for mathematics that is too "deep". Most people could not care less about prime numbers. Yes, they drive important cryptographic procedures. But we care about cryptography. We care that the message gets to its destination "safely". If its done using prime numbers, imaginary numbers, geometric numbers of fantasy numbers, it does not matter.

See I disagree. They tend to live very interesting lives, not because of their achievement, but I suspect their achievements and how interesting their life is is inextricably intertwined. They tend to not fit in convention very well and live at odds with society in a not too dissimilar way to say a Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison, but without the music and poetry. You’re right of course that folks like to watch movies about people they are aware of and understand their contribution. But I’d also point out that society overall is a lot better educated than in the past, more people than ever would find scientists and mathematicians and engineers easier to identify with and would understand their contribution than ever before - and those people also control an incredible amount of the available disposable income.

I think the real issue is the producers and directors and business folks in the film industry are not in that camp. They’re more likely to make a biography of Robin Williams than Paul Dirac, and they decide what gets made.

Einstein is probably a terrible example here because in his day he was regarded as a pop culture icon so there’s plenty about him in film [1]. That’s not even considering that he’s had plenty of excellent biographies written about him. Agora with Rachel Weisz is an excellent one about Hypatia.

Could we do better as a society? Maybe. To do that though you’d have to bring these stories into film classrooms and get students inspired. But first you have to make the stories inspiring and a lot of them aren’t thaaat much except for the advancements they provided to the field and that’s harder to convey. Maybe Leibniz and Newton would be a good rivalry on the screen.

[1] https://www.themoviedb.org/keyword/8689-albert-einstein/movi...

To my knowledge there’s only one dramatization of his biography which is this:

https://www.dogomovies.com/einstein-and-eddington/movie-revi...

My point is even einstein doesn’t get the same treatment as, say, a politician or actor gets as far as coverage. There’s more out there about Elvis than Newton.

Newton as a human being was insanely interesting. Einstein as well. I would pick Hooke and Newtons relationship before Leibniz, fwiw.

There's an excellent series in which Newton plays a large part, called The Baroque Cycle. I'd love a TV adaptation of it, although you'd have to gut much of academic stuff in it and just focus on the (excellent) plot

Yes Neil Stephenson is such a versatile writer. The Baroque Cycle is definitely recommended although not his best work.

Also, biopics are terrible. I can't think of a single one that is worth it, especially if you consider that for many of the subjects, you could just watch a documentary on the person anyway, often with real footage and interviews with them. Biopics are usually just cash grabs and weird Hollywood flexes about mimicking someone else. The fact that they do so well at the awards ceremonies speaks to this.

I find them useful for teaching my 8 year old something about the person behind the name. After watching Einstein and Eddingiton (pretty ok movie) she has a better appreciation for who he is beyond a name. Obviously you learn almost nothing about his research and it’s a very tiny slice of Einsteins extraordinarily interesting life.

Is that better than just watching a documentary?

I've seen a few biopics or dramatizations of famous people - notably, The Imitation Game about Alan Turing which was all right, and the Theory of Everything which supposedly was about Stephen Hawking's work but it was more about his relationships - it was based on the memoirs of his ex-wife. But both were dramatizations from secondhand information at best; a biopic of older people like Einstein will be even more picky.

I mean would a biopic about Einstein touch on his many relationships (including his cousin) and the drama around that?

I can recommend „The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac“.

It’s only in book form, no?

There are tons of excellent books on mathematicians, engineers, and scientists. Just virtually no visual media.

I hope to see a movie about Perelman, too.

There is a documentary: Counting from Infinity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBADiHU_0Wg

Why everything has to be a movie?

It's one of the few working ways to get modern societies to learn something, but a catchy musical can work too.

you dont learn anything useful in 2h of heavily romanticized hollywood fiction