Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
A viral multiplication spiral once attributed to Nikola Tesla opens the door to a much older mathematical story, one rooted in ancient Sumerian and Babylonian base-60 mathematics. In this episode, we explore how sexagesimal counting shaped everything from clocks and geometry to modern science, and how ideas are often misnamed after the most famous figure rather than the original innovator. Along the way, we unpack eponymy, the Matthew Effect, and why credit in science and math is rarely distributed fairly.
Learn:
🌀 Why Base-60 Still Runs Our World How the Sumerian sexagesimal system underpins timekeeping, angles, geography, and trigonometry, and why it survived for thousands of years.
📐 The Truth Behind “Tesla’s” Multiplication Map Where the multiplication spiral actually comes from, how it visually encodes multiples of 12 and 60, and why attributing it to Tesla is mathematically unnecessary.
📚 Eponymy, the Matthew Effect, and Who Gets Credit From Fibonacci to Pythagoras, Rosalind Franklin to Vera Rubin, we examine how scientific ideas are routinely named after the wrong people and what that reveals about power, prestige, and history.
Featured Concepts & Figures
· Sexagesimal (base-60) number systems
· Sumerian and Babylonian mathematics
· Tesla’s Multiplication Map vs. the Sumerian Sexagesimal Spiral
· Eponymy and Stigler’s Law
· The Matthew Effect and the Matilda Effect
· Pythagorean triples and Plimpton-322
🔗 Explore more on our website: mathsciencehistory.com 📚 To buy my book Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life on Amazon, visit https://a.co/d/g3OuP9h
🌍 Let’s Connect!Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mathsciencehistory.bsky.social Instagram: instagram.com/math.science.history Facebook: facebook.com/mathsciencehistory LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/math-science-history Threads: threads.com/@math.science.history Mastodon: https://mathsciencehistory@mathstodon.xyz YouTube: Math! Science! History! - YouTube Pinterest: pinterest.com/mathsciencehistory
🎧 Enjoying the Podcast?
☕ Support the Show: Coffee!! PayPal
Leave a review! It helps more people discover the show! Share this episode with friends & fellow history buffs! Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform
Check out our merch: mathsciencehistory.com/the-store
Music: All music is public domain and has no Copyright and no rights reserved. Selections from The Little Prince by Lloyd Rodgers
Until next time, carpe diem!
A viral multiplication spiral once attributed to Nikola Tesla opens the door to a much older mathematical story, one rooted in ancient Sumerian and Babylonian base-60 mathematics. In this episode, we explore how sexagesimal counting shaped everything from clocks and geometry to modern science, and how ideas are often misnamed after the most famous figure rather than the original innovator. Along the way, we unpack eponymy, the Matthew Effect, and why credit in science and math is rarely distributed fairly.
Learn:
🌀 Why Base-60 Still Runs Our World How the Sumerian sexagesimal system underpins timekeeping, angles, geography, and trigonometry, and why it survived for thousands of years.
📐 The Truth Behind “Tesla’s” Multiplication Map Where the multiplication spiral actually comes from, how it visually encodes multiples of 12 and 60, and why attributing it to Tesla is mathematically unnecessary.
📚 Eponymy, the Matthew Effect, and Who Gets Credit From Fibonacci to Pythagoras, Rosalind Franklin to Vera Rubin, we examine how scientific ideas are routinely named after the wrong people and what that reveals about power, prestige, and history.
Featured Concepts & Figures
· Sexagesimal (base-60) number systems
· Sumerian and Babylonian mathematics
· Tesla’s Multiplication Map vs. the Sumerian Sexagesimal Spiral
· Eponymy and Stigler’s Law
· The Matthew Effect and the Matilda Effect
· Pythagorean triples and Plimpton-322
🔗 Explore more on our website: mathsciencehistory.com 📚 To buy my book Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life on Amazon, visit https://a.co/d/g3OuP9h
🌍 Let’s Connect!Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mathsciencehistory.bsky.social Instagram: instagram.com/math.science.history Facebook: facebook.com/mathsciencehistory LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/math-science-history Threads: threads.com/@math.science.history Mastodon: https://mathsciencehistory@mathstodon.xyz YouTube: Math! Science! History! - YouTube Pinterest: pinterest.com/mathsciencehistory
🎧 Enjoying the Podcast?
☕ Support the Show: Coffee!! PayPal
Leave a review! It helps more people discover the show! Share this episode with friends & fellow history buffs! Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform
Check out our merch: mathsciencehistory.com/the-store
Music: All music is public domain and has no Copyright and no rights reserved. Selections from The Little Prince by Lloyd Rodgers
Until next time, carpe diem!
