In the first episode of this fascinating BBC science documentary, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy goes back in time to a pivotal moment in ancient Egypt and Greek history. Decimal systems are created, while the way we tell time today is based on a Babylonian Base 60 number system. What would our lives be like without the fundamental theories of math giants such as Archimedes and Pythagoras?

In the next instalment of this BBC science documentary, Marcus du Sautoy discovers how, as Europe fell into the Dark Ages, the development of math was taken up enthusiastically in the East. India came up with symbols for zero and concepts of infinity, while numeracy helped to build the Great Wall of China. How did these developments influence western thinkers of the Middle Ages such as Fibonacci?

In 17th Century Europe a mathematical revolution was taking place. Descartes was fusing math and philosophy, Newton was developing calculus and Fermat developed his theorem that would baffle mathematicians for more than 350 years. In the latest chapter of this enthralling BBC science documentary, Marcus du Sautoy considers what it was about this time that saw such brilliant minds collide.

In the final part of this BBC science documentary, Marcus du Sautoy investigates the great problems of mathematics that remain unsolved and the minds that tried to decipher them, including Cantor's work on infinity and conjecture about chaos theory from Poincare. But will anyone ever reconcile Riemann's hypothesis on prime numbers, which carries with it a $1million prize for whoever can crack it?