• A brief biographical sketch of your mathematician.
• A brief account of his/her mathematical accomplishments.
• A mathematical exposition of one topic (e.g., a theorem) and its proof: this is the main part of your paper. You can use modern notation and describe a more recent proof if you want, but you should explain how this relates to the terminology, notation, and method of proof originally used by the author. If relevant, put it in context of other knowledge of the time and mention what became of the ideas in later mathematical history.
• 2-3 xeroxed pages of the first published occurrence of the result you describe.
• Bibliography listing all sources used: the author's work containing the topic, secondary sources, any other books consulted, and web pages consulted (note: the web is very useful for finding things, but information there can be less reliable because it has usually not gone through an editorial process, so any information from web pages should be verified independently using printed sources).

If your paper is focused on a topic instead of one mathematician, then replace the first two items by

• A brief account of the history of your topic.
• A brief biographical sketch of two or three mathematicians involved in the topic.

Paper topics

Due dates:

• Friday, February 18: outline and list of references
• Friday, March 18: first (not rough!) version of paper. This should be typed, in LaTeX if possible. LaTeX is free mathematical typesetting software, an enhancement of TeX, used professionally (for example, Stillwell's text was produced using LaTeX). You can download it here; you might also click at the bottom there to go to the "starter page".
• Friday, April 22: final version of paper. Please hand in the first draft with the final draft.