MAT 336: History of Mathematics

Presentation Schedule — Lecture 1 — Spring 2026

#	Date	Talk Topic (Left)	Talk Topic (Right)
12	Mar 5	The Mathematics of Pyramid Construction in Ancient Egypt Josh	The rule of false position Rosalie
13	Mar 10	Mean Proportionals and the Duplication of the Cube (see also here) Lily	Thales on the height of the pyramids Cristina
14	Mar 12	Which Regular Polygons Can Be Constructed? From Euclid to Gauss Jenny	Intro to Gauss — Gauss on the Regular Polygon of Seventeen Sides (see also here) Shawn
Spring Break Week
15	Mar 24	Gauss on hyperbolic geometry Adam	History of the parallel postulate (see also here) Rahman
16	Mar 26	The Pentagram and the Discovery of Incommensurability Jibran	Gauss's First Argument for Least Squares Ryan
17	Mar 31	Archimedes on the quadrature of the parabola Vincent	Ptolemy on Trigonometric tables Sylvester
18	Apr 2	—	Diophantus Destiny
19	Apr 7	—	Historical Development of the Chinese Remainder Theorem in China and India Dani
20	Apr 9	"Linear Algebra" in 17th-Century China Gee	Right-Angled Triangles in Ancient China (see also here) YuLe
21	Apr 14	Ancient Indian Square Roots Duanqi	Ideas of calculus in Medieval India. Series in the Kerala School (see also here) Sam
22	Apr 16	Muslim scholars from the Islamic Golden Age on Algebra (source) Labib	Ideas of Calculus in the Islamic Golden Age: From Sums of Powers to Integration (see also here) Amirjon
23	Apr 21	Euler and the bridges of Königsberg Liya	Euler on Number Theory Jonathan
24	Apr 23	Maria Agnesi Pat	The Bernoullis and the origin of probability theory Alexis
25	Apr 28	Cardano, the gambling scholar Donna	Pascal and the Invention of Probability Theory Jesse
26	Apr 30	Cauchy and the Origins of Rigorous Calculus William	Newton's Discovery of the General Binomial Theorem Wardah
27	May 5	The Beginning of Research in the Calculus of Variations Ian	Turing on the Turing Machine Diego
28	May 7	—	—