This project involves the preparation of a documentary film about mathematician Yitang Zhang for national broadcast on public television via American Public Television syndication (APT) in May, June of 2017. Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture premiered theatrically in January 2016. It tells the story of Yitang Zhang, who made an important breakthrough towards solving the Twin Prime Conjecture in 2013. In the film, the story of Zhang's quiet perseverance amidst adversity, and his preference for thinking and working in solitude, is interwoven with a history of the Twin Prime Conjecture as told by several mathematicians, many of whom have wrestled with this enormously challenging problem in Number Theory - Daniel Goldston, Kannan Soundararajan, Andrew Granville, Peter Sarnak, Enrico Bombieri, James Maynard, Nicholas Katz, David Eisenbud, Ken Ribet, and Terry Tao. The film was produced and directed by George Csicsery, and has proven highly effective at conveying mathematical ideas to the general public through the human stories of the mathematicians behind the ideas.
Modification of the film in preparation for public television broadcast involves editing, adding required modules, closed captioning, and other technical work, as well as promotional efforts aimed at individual station programmers.
