Remember that dreaded figure your teacher scrawled on the margin of your math test paper? It’s the hero of this episode. Our much-villainised zero has a fascinating history.

The Babylonians, as we discovered in Episode 1, may have arrived at a placeholder for zero, but the actual symbol did not enter convention until the 7^th century in the Indian subcontinent. It later became a foundational element of mathematical concepts during the Islamic Golden Age (the word algebra has Arabic roots). Later, it was adopted in Europe by Renaissance mathematicians.

Long story short: Zero has come full circle.

In this episode, Divakaran and Shraddha host you through the evolution of zero through the ages. 

Credits:

Akshay Ramuhalli, Bijoy Venugopal, Bruce Lee Mani, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Supriya Joshi and Velu Shankar

Further reading:

Book | Physics for Entertainment by Yakov Perelman
Read online at Open​Li​brary​.org | Full text at Archive​.org

Book | Charles Seife: ZERO — THE BIOGRAPHY OF A DANGEROUS IDEA
Amazon India | YouTube — Full Audio Transcript