Write a 7- to 9-page essay on some topic in the history of mathematics (7-9 full pages does not include a mostly blank title page or the bibliography).  You may research a mathematical idea and write a paper tracing its development over time.  Or you may write about the contributions made by a significant mathematician (in this case, you should focus on this person's achievements rather than present a mere biography of the mathematician).  

Possible topics include the mathematics of Egypt or Babylonia; the Pythagoreans; Euclid's Elements; Archimedes; Diophantine equations; the mathematics of India, China or the Arab world; the introduction and acceptance of negative numbers or Arabic numerals; Fibonacci numbers; Kepler; Newton's Principia; the dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the invention of calculus; Fermat's Last Theorem; the Goldbach conjecture; Euler; Gauss; the development of non-Euclidean geometries; Hilbert; Gödel; prime numbers; π; e; the Golden Ratio φ, Cantor; the contributions of female mathematicians like Kovalevsky, Noether, Julia Robinson;  etc.  This list of topics is not meant to be exhaustive.

Your sources may be books on the history of mathematics; biographies of mathematicians; articles in the American Mathematical Monthly, Scientific American, Science (journals available in our library) or similar journals; etc.  Our library has many mathematics books; they usually have call numbers beginning with QA.  If you want more ideas for essays, you can browse in this section of the library.  Several sources should be printed sources (besides a standard encyclopedia or our textbook), at least one source should be an Internet source, at least one source should be a book (besides a standard encyclopedia or our textbook), and at least one source should be a journal article.  Do not use Wikipedia or a similar online encyclopedia as a source.  Do not rely too heavily on our textbook.

Here are a few helpful hints about writing essays:

• Give yourself plenty of time to think about what you want to write and to write the essay.  Do not try to throw something together at the last minute.
• Do not rely too heavily on just one or two sources.
• If you use something from the Internet, make sure it comes from a reliable source.
• Before you begin to write, it may be helpful to think about what you want to say and to make an outline.  This will help you to organize your thoughts.
• Proofread your paper before turning it in.  You may even want to read it aloud.
• You must have someone else proofread your paper, someone who is a good writer and will give you honest feedback.  You can get some assistance at the University Student Success Center; it is good to make an appointment in advance (they don’t proofread papers).
• Use the Math Research Guide (it is available online at the Rolfing Library home page under Research Guides).  Through it, you can access journal articles, which are available through JSTOR (these are all full text), Wilson Select Plus (these are all full text), Academic Search Premier, and Google Scholar.  Google Books is a helpful resource, too.   If you want a particular article but cannot obtain it in this way, you might be able to get it through Interlibrary Loan; that can take a couple of weeks, so start early.
• Do not copy something verbatim from another source without using quotation marks and citing the source; otherwise, it is plagiarism.  Don’t puff up your paper with long quotations.

Your essay should be double-spaced and have standard margins and font (12pt) and spacing.  If you write exponents, use exponential notation (e.g., x2) instead of caret notation (e.g., x^2).  If you want to show subtraction, use a minus sign (−) instead of a hyphen (-); the minus sign is available under Insert, then Symbol.  If you write equations, use the equation writer (try Insert, then Equation) to write your equation, because    looks better than √(a+b)2/(2a). I will show this to you. 

Please submit your essay electronically (i.e., via email) rather than printing it out.

If your essay is about 15 pages long, you can submit it to the annual Student Paper Contest in the History of Mathematics that is run by the History of Mathematics Special Interest Group of the Mathematical Association of America.  Winners receive a book and their papers are published in Convergence, an online journal about the history of mathematics that is published by the MAA. The deadline for submission is in mid-March.

One purpose of this exercise is to help you learn to write correctly.  You will not receive a grade on your paper until it is intelligible and completely free of errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar.

You will also make a 6-to-10-minute oral presentation to the class based on your paper.  The first presentation will take place a few days after you turn in the essay, and we will have one or two presentations every class period.  The essay is worth 100 points and the oral presentation is worth 25 points.