14 Movies That Make Math Exciting, Against All Odds
A lot of great math movies hinge on the United States not being the anti-intellectual capital of the world.
Rubick’s Cube of Death
1997’s Cube was conceived by mad mathematician David W. Pravica. He didn’t write or direct, but he did serve as a math consultant to ensure maximum accuracy. His behemoth torture chamber network consists of a cubical outer shell surrounding 17,576 cubical rooms (although some of those would be reserved for engines and movement mechanisms). They’re all numbered according to their X, Y and Z coordinates.
Ladies Is Mathematicians Too, Go on Brush Your Shoulders Off
2009’s Agora is about Hypatia, a fifth-century philosopher and astronomer who wasn’t the first female mathematician in history, but definitely the first one whose life was well-documented. It was never widely released in the U.S., but it did numbers in Spain. Historical publication The Cambridge History of Science raved that it was “spectacularly anachronistic.”
Aykroyd + Redford = Profit???
Sneakers is a 1992 comedy/thriller/heist movie about a bunch of hackers being recruited by the government and solving the murder of a mathematician. Most notably, they had an on-set math consultant: computer scientist Leonard Adleman, who coined the term “virus” and invented the bizarre field of DNA computing.
Breaking News: Math Teacher Does His Job
Stand and Deliver is based on real-life Los Angeles math teacher Jaime Escalante, who inspired 18 kids to pass AP Calc in 1982. It won an Oscar and got two Golden Globe nominations.
You Don’t Need to Know Math to Be a Mathematician
Srinivasa Ramanujan grew up poor in late-19th century India, and despite having no formal mathematical education, developed some groundbreaking ideas in fields like number theory, continued fractions and infinite series. He died at the age of 32, but his work is still being studied and proven. His story was chronicled in the 1991 book The Man Who Knew Infinity and the 2015 film of the same name.
Counting for Fun and Profit
21 (2008) was a story about the MIT Blackjack Team, a group of MIT and Harvard students who learned how to count cards and who would cheat casinos out of their hard-earned chips. It was based on a book that was based on a true story, although liberties were taken every step of the way.
I’m Not Crazy, You’re Crazy
Proof is a 2005 movie about Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal grappling with the tragic death of their father/mentor, respectively, who was very sure he’d mathematically proven he wasn’t insane.
Pi-ranoia
Before Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky had his directorial debut with 1998’s Pi, about a huge math dork who drives himself insane trying to reconcile the disorder of human life with the pure, blissful order of math. In black and white! How artsy!
The Philanderers’ Tale
The Theory of Everything is a moving but significantly whitewashed rendition of how Stephen Hawking and his wife cheated on each other, separated, and ultimately got back together. There’s some math in there, too.
A Brief History of Steve
A Brief History of Time is the OG Stephen Hawking film. This 1991 biography/documentary was one part celebration of Hawking’s 1988 book of the same name, one part collection of interviews with Hawking’s colleagues and family members. It has a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Bueller
Infinity is a 1996 biopic that stars Matthew Broderick as theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, and is based on Feynman’s book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Feynman was involved in everything from the atom bomb to the Challenger investigation, and won a Nobel prize in quantum electrodynamics.
Second Place! At Math Camp
Real-life math prodigy Daniel Lightwing came in second place at the 2006 International Mathematical Olympiad as a teen, by both harnessing his love of numbers and overcoming his discomfort around people. His story was made into the 2007 documentary Beautiful Young Minds and the 2014 drama X+Y.
A Mathematician? With Chest Hair?!
Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm was killed off in the original novel Jurassic Park, but his raw sexuality made him such a popular character that Michael Crichton kept him alive. He reached peak popularity when he became the protagonist of 1997’s The Lost World.
Can You Imagine a U.S. Government Capable of Understanding Math?
Travelling Salesman is a 2012 math thriller about a notoriously unsolved theoretical computer science problem. “P Versus NP,” aka the Traveling Salesman Problem, is a wildly confusing hypothetical scenario which, if solved, would have major implications in real-world encryption and decryption scenarios. In the film, four mathematicians solve the problem, and meet with the Department of Defense about how best to protect this new knowledge. You could probably get a meeting with Pete Hegseth if you told him a new way to calculate “BOOBIES.”
