Dangerous Knowledge

Dangerous Knowledge tracks the lives of four of history’s most eminent mathematicians — Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing — all of them geniuses whose work not only contributed to a better understanding of the universe but also profoundly changed the world. However, each of the four tragically descended into mental illness and later took their own life as they pushed the boundaries of scientific endeavour. The documentary is an enlightening exploration of whether there are boundaries of knowledge that the human mind should not seek to cross.

Presented by filmmaker David Malone, the film begins by profiling Georg Cantor, a mathematician whose tragic end came as he struggled to prove his theories of infinity. The second figure in the series is Boltzmann, who was instrumental in the formulation of atomic theory. He too suffered mental illness and took his own life. Gödel, a contemporary of Einstein, later starved himself to death in a sanatorium. Dangerous Knowledge closes with the story of Alan Turing, the Second World War code-breaker and the father of computer science, who took his own life while working on the theory that some things are fundamentally unprovable.

For context and balance, Malone interviews a number of contemporary thinkers, including Greg Chaitin and Roger Penrose. The result is compelling viewing on a subject that has fascinated thinkers and philosophers for millennia.