Mathematics in Movies: Harvard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Oliv­er Knill teach­es cal­cu­lus, lin­ear alge­bra and dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions at Har­vard, and, sev­er­al years back, he pulled togeth­er a fair­ly nifty col­lec­tion of Math­e­mat­ics Scenes in Movies. Over 150 films are rep­re­sent­ed here, every­thing from Good Will Hunt­ing, A Beau­ti­ful Mind, Juras­sic Park (above) to Alice in Won­der­land (1951), The Mal­tese Fal­con and Apoc­a­lypse Now. You can watch each scene in flash for­mat on Knil­l’s site, or down­load them as a quick­time file. And, math buffs, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Online Math Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miss USA 2011: Should Schools Teach Evo­lu­tion? … or Math?

Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion: The Vedic Way

The Math Guy Radio Archive