Your task is to prepare a 5 minute presentation on a famous mathematician from history.
You could create a PowerPoint or props to show the class, which tell us something about the mathematician and what they contributed.
Your presentation should explain:
- Who the mathematician was
- When and where the mathematician lived
- Some interesting facts about the mathematician
- What the mathematician discovered about maths
- How might this discovery be relevant to us today?
The idea is that we all learn something about the history of maths and maybe some useful maths for us to use today.
Presentations will begin on Tuesday 24th May!
Some suggestions for possible people to study:
al-Khwarizmi, Fibonacci, Aryabhata, Nicholas Copernicus, John Napier, Wilhelm Schickard, Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Pierre Simon LaPlace, Charles Babbage, Arthur Cayley, August Ferdinand Möbius, Alan Turing, Archimedes, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, Sir Isaac Newton, Pythagoras, Srinivasa Ramunjan, Euclid, Euler, Rene Decartes, Benjamin Banneker, Kurt Godel… There are loads of people to consider!
If you want a challenge then choose a more modern mathematician! I hope some of you will!
Resources
- MacTutor History of Maths archive
- Liz Richards’ History of Maths page
- Wikipedia History of Maths
- ThinkQuest
- British Sociey for the History of Mathematics