Each student eventually chose a specific topic to study. She spent a lot of time searching for and reading information, studying and developing research questions, and then presenting her work to the rest of the group. And each student did give a talk in the undergraduate paper sessions at MathFest. We were so proud of them. Links to their annotated PowerPoint presentations are provided below.
Laura Printz: Emilie du Châtelet and Maria Agnesi as early feminists.
Melissa Barrick: Euler’s Letters to a German Princess: how did Euler teach mathematics to a young woman?
Chelsea Sprankle: Maria Agnesi’s Analytical Institutions: How did she teach calculus to young people? How was her book different from Euler’s? Did she use Newton’s or Leibniz’s notation, and was it changed in the English translation?
Lindsey Nagy: Rediscovering Laura Bassi, a physicist and mathematician from Bologna who was very famous in her time.