Mathematics is one of the most difficult subjects for students. In this short chat we will try to show the different souls that make up mathematics and we will show that mathematics also has human aspects. Yes, even if it’s hard to believe, we mathematics teachers also have a soul!

We will start with the birth of mathematics as a science, with Pythagoras and his wonder in discovering the links with music. The irrationality of the square root of two will then put an end to his attempt to found a religion based on numbers. We will also talk about the difficult relationships between mathematics and religion: Saint Augustine wrote that we mathematicians are destined for hell and Goethe, in his description of Walpurgis Night, describes the witches who participate in the sabbat as passionate about mathematics. This won’t come as too much of a surprise to many students who hate math. We will talk about the barbaric killing of Hypatia and the trial of Galileo, the relationship between mathematics and the Divine Comedy (Dante in the 33rd canto of Paradiso compares the search for God to the search for the value of pi). We will also talk about modern mathematics and specifically about the third scientific revolution, the digital one, started by three mathematicians: Von Neumann, Turing and Shannon. Finally we will conclude by talking about how mathematics could influence our future and what the mathematician of the year three thousand will be like.

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