Professor Bradley's MTP 656 Biography Projects Page, Fall 2011

Math Teachers Program 656 - History of Mathematics
Fall 2011

Roster of Biography Subjects

Biography Projects

Each student will reserarch the life and accomplishments of an important mathematician from the past. Biography subjects will be chosen by the students from the Roster, which can be accessed through Moodle or via the link above. Students should choose two or more subjects, in order of preference, and send their bids via email to bradley AT adelphi DOT edu.

The result of your research will be presented in two ways:

Class Presentation:
A presentation to the class, lasting about 5-10 minutes. The presentations will be given in chronological order, so the date of your presentation depends on which mathematician you choose.
Your presentation should consist of three parts, of roughly equal length:
1. Biographical information: family, education, non-mathematical achievement, etc.
2. A survey of the mathematician's major works.
3. A detailed presentation of some particular discovery that the mathematician made (e.g. a theorem or a formula)
Essay
This paper is due by the end of the class on November 22, 2011. It must be turned in electronically via Moodle and the Turnitin program. Here are the guidelines:
- The general guidelines for your biography project are given in Math Through the Ages, page 61, Project #1.
- Your biography subject is the same person you discussed in your oral presentation.
- As outlined in Math Through the Ages, you must use some sources other than the internet, specifically including The Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which is available at the reference section of the Swirbul Library.
- Your paper should be 4-5 pages long, double-spaced, not counting any illustrations or diagrams. It must be typed, but if you are including equations, you may write them by hand and scan them in if you don't wnat to use math typesetting software. You must include a list of the references you used in researching your paper, one of which must be The Dictionay of Scientific Biography.
- Remember who your target audience is: undergraduate math majors, graduate education students specializing in mathematics education and working math teachers. You can't throw around phrases like "quasi-hyperbolic partial differential equations" without explaining what they mean. Your explanations must make sense to someone in your target audience group.
- Plagiarism is not acceptable. It is the most serious of all academic offenses. You may not present the writing of other people as though it were your own; to do so will result in a grade of zero for the portion of your final grade that is based on the biography project. Other academic sanctions may also be imposed. Please note that close paraphrase (i.e. wholesale copying of someone else's text with just the occasional word changed) without proper attribution is just as serious a case of plagiarism as outright copying. The prohibition against plagiarism applies to both the oral and written portion of the biography project.