History of Mathematics Biography Assignment

A graded requirement will be the submission and presentation of a brief essay (biographical sketch) about a person prominent in the history of mathematics. The biographical sketch should contain information about the time period in which the person lived and worked, the major contributions of the person, and, if possible, any interesting (humorous?) anecdotal information. The written essay should be at least a couple of pages in length. The oral presentation should take 5 minutes of class time, certainly not more than 5 minutes. Important: both the written essay and the classroom presentation must contain and briefly explain a mathematical relationship, figure, or graph that is representative of the mathematician’s contribution. Remember that your instructor is available for assistance in this endeavor, and full documentation of resources used is required. At least one web source and one print source is required. Some suggestions:

Diophantus Marin Mersenne Janos Bolyai

Pappus Nicolo Tartaglia Nicolai Lobachevski

Hipparchus Girolamo Cardano Bernhard Riemann

Ptolemy Rafael Bombelli Carl Friedrich Gauss

Hypatia Galileo Gallilei Albrecht Durer

Apollonius Johannes Kepler Gerard Desargues

Eratosthenes Bonaventura Cavalieri Jean Victor Poncelet

Brahmagupta Blaise Pascal Augustin Louis Cauchy

Bhaskara I and/or II Christian Huygens David Rittenhouse

Al Khwarizmi Isaac Barrow Nathaniel Bowditch

Ummar Al Khayammi Isaac Newton Benjamin Franklin

Gerbert D’Aurillac Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Ferdinand Hassler

Nicole Oresme Bernoulli (the family) Robert Adrain

Leonardo of Pisa Maria Agnesi George Baron

Johannes Muller Emilie De Chatelet John Farrar

Robert Recorde Pierre Simon Laplace Andrew Ellicott

Pierre Fermat Euler Benjamin Banneker

Rene Descartes Joseph Louis Lagrange Richard Dedekind

Francois Viete George Berkeley Giuseppe Peano

1 Georg Cantor John Von Neumann John Graunt

Felix Klein Evariste Galois Lambert Quetelet

Bernhard Riemann Christian Huygens Francis Galton

Henri Poincare Jakob Bernoulli Francis Edgeworth

Sophie Germain Simeon Denis Poisson Karl Pearson

Emmy Noether Abraham DeMoivre William Gossett

Sonya Kovalevsky P. L. Chebyshev R. A. Fisher

Niels Abel Florence Nightingale W. Edwards Deming

Alan Turing John Tukey

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