Reading Classics Home Page


Reading Classics began as a VIGRE Working Group in Winter Quarter of 2003. Its aim is to read various classic mathematical texts and understand something of the history of mathematics.
2002-3: Winter, Spring
2003-4: Fall, Winter, Spring
2004-5: Fall, Winter, Spring
2005-6: Fall, Winter, Spring
2006-7: Fall, Winter, Spring
2007-8: Fall, Winter, Spring
2008-9: Fall, Winter, Spring
2009-10: Fall, Winter, Spring
2010-11: Fall, Winter, Spring
2011-12: Fall, Winter, Spring


lliptic curve

Winter, 2003:  We looked at Diophantus and the background of modern number theory and arithmetic algebraic geometry.

Some references:

  1. I. G.Bashmakova: Diophantus and Diophantine Equations, MAA 1997
  2. T.L. Heath: Diophantus of Alexandria, Dover 1964


Talks:


os moi pou sto

Spring, 2003: We looked at the works of Archimedes.

Some references:

  1. S. Stein: Archimedes: What did he do besides cry Eureka? MAA 1999
  2. T.L.Heath: The Works of Archimedes, Dover 1953


Talks:

 


uler

Fall, 2003: We looked at the works of Euler.

Some references:


Talks:

Notes on the talks (prepared by Steve Miller).

 


uler

Winter, 2004: We continued with the works of Euler.

Some references:


Talks:

Notes on the talks (prepared by Steve Miller).


uler

Spring, 2004: More Euler!

Some references:


Talks:

 


auss

Fall, 2004: We looked at the works of Gauss.


Talks:




ermat

Winter, 2005: We are looking at the works of Fermat and his contemporaries.


Talks:








 

Spring, 2005: We are continuing with the work of contemporaries of Fermat.

scalsargueslliseteplerrd Brounckerlileoygens
Talks:

 

Fall, 2005: Abel and Galois

aloisbelTalks:



 

Winter, 2006: More contemporaries of Newton (but not Newton himself!)

nti-NewtonTalks:



 

Spring, 2006: Mostly Leibniz

eibnizTalks:



 

Fall, 2006: Euler redux
uler

Talks:

 

 

Winter, 2006:
uler


Talks:



 

Spring, 2007:
uler


Talks:

 

 

Fall, 2007: Newton's Principia
ewton
We worked through parts of Newton's Principia.

Talks: Fabrizio Polo, Justin Wiser, Kitzeln Siebert, Eric Swartz, Zhizhang Xie, Inger Knutson

 

Winter, 2008: Newton's Principia (continued)


 

Spring, 2008: more Newton


Talks: John McSweeney, Marc Carnovale, Sam Fotis, Craig Jackson, Kyle Joecken, Kitzeln Siebert, Jared Hirsch, Ilya Volynin

 

Fall, 2008: Lagrange
agrangeTalks:





 

Winter, 2009: Lagrange and his contemporaries
agrange
Talks:



 

Spring, 2009: The early 1800s

Talks:

 

 

Fall, 2009: Euler !?


Talks: Cory Staten, Trent Ohl, Robert Bradford, Marc Carnovale, Charles Baker

 

Winter, 2010: Euler!


Talks:

 

 

Spring, 2010: Unrestricted!


Talks:

 

 

Fall, 2010: the Bernoullis


Talks:

 

 

Winter, 2011: the Bernoullis


Talks:

 

 

Spring, 2011: the Bernoullis


Talks:

 

 

Fall, 2011: Early mathematics: 500 B.C.E.--1000 C.E.


Talks:

 

 

Winter, 2012: Early mathematics: 500 B.C.E.--1000 C.E.


Talks:

 

 

Spring, 2012: Early mathematics: 500 B.C.E.--1000 C.E.

Talks:

 

·       Robin Baidya: Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic in Greece and Rome

·       Charles Baker: Archimedes Second Book on the sphere and the cylinder

·       Daniel Moore: Babylonian Numerals

·       John McSweeney: Number Systems and Calendars: the Maya and Islam

 

 

Change to Semesters

 

Fall, 2012: Fermat and his contemporaries


Talks:

 

Spring, 2013: Erdos(?)

Talks: Bart Snapp, Gary Kennedy, Patrick Schnell, Andrew Krieger, Ben O’Connor, Wesley Hamilton, Boming Jia, Adam Funke, Qing Chu

 

 

Fall, 2013:  Euler


Talks:

·      Andrew Krieger: L’Hopital’s Rule

·      John H. Johnson: Greek and Latin Squares: Euler’s Officer Problem (after E 530 and E 795)

·      Wesley Hamilton: The Partition Function

·      Daniel Glasscock: ?

·      Boming Jia: ? Replicated Exponentials

·      Duncan Clark: Evaluating Zeta(2) (after E 41)

·      Mario Carneiro: Fermat’s Little Theorem

·      Henry Tran: Partial Fractions (after E 794 and E 153)

·      Ben O’Connor: Euler’s Constant

·      David Simmons: ?

 

 

Spring, 2014:  Euler


Talks:

·      John H. Johnson

·      Boming Jia: Geometrica et Spherica Quaedam (after E 749)

·      Ben O’Connor: (Various geometric results of Euler; E 693)

·      Duncan Clark: Divergent Series (after E 247)

·      Andrew Krieger: The Genovese Lottery (after E 812)

·      Alek Eren: Pentagonal Number Theorem (after E 158, E 244)

·      Daniel Glasscock: Elliptic Integrals (after E 251)

·      Gary Kennedy: (?)

·      Aaron Wong: On Zeta(s)

·      Christopher Antos: Fermat’s Theorem on primes of the from 4n+1 (after E 241, E 227, E 26)

·      Rosanna Mersereau: Magic Squares (history and E 530)

 

 

Fall, 2014:  Open…


Talks:

·      Boming Jia: Two ancient methods to find the volume of a sphere (Archimedes 287-212 BCE and Tsu Chung Chih 480-525 CE)

·      Wesley Hamilton: Edouard  Lucas’s Married Couple Problem

·      Anthony Pardo: How many ways to divide a polygon into triangles? (after Euler and others)

·      Protiva Rahman: (?)

·      Duncan Clark: Polya’s Theorem on the projection of {z in C: |p(z)|≤2} onto a line (after Proofs from the Book)

·      Ji Hoon Chun: (?)

·      Daniel Glasscock: Euler, Herglotz, and a beautiful series for the cotangent.

 

 

Spring, 2015:  Open…


Talks:

·      Boming Jia: Euler, the Basel Problem, and Tannery

·      Johann Miller

·      Tom Dinitz

·      Wesley Hamilton

·      Matt Carr

·      Noah Taylor

·      Duncan Clark

·      Anthony Pardo

·      Nicholas Hemleben

·      Christopher Wang: (?) The Honeycomb Tiling Conjecture

·      David Simmons: Liouville’s Theorem on conformal mappings

·      Daniel Brogan: Cubic curves in the triangular plane (the Darboux cubic et alia)

 

Fall, 2015:


Talks:

Spring, 2016:  Open…


Talks:

·      Willa Del Negro Skeehan:

·      Sam Fotis: An essay by Omar Khayyam

·      Daniel Murphy: Applications of Sperner’s Lemma

·      Anthony Ciavarella: Euler and the zeta function

·      Max Olson: History of Magic Squares

·      Caleb Dilsavor: Infinitesimals and Non-Standard Analysis

·      Anthony Pardo: Is it possible to divide a square into an odd number of triangles of equal area?

·      Nik Henderson: Conway’s “look and say” sequence

·      Aidan Howells: On the divergences of the sum of 1/p.

·      Daniel Brogan: The 27 lines on a cubic surface

·      Kevin Kauzau: (?)

·      Michael Crawshaw: (?)

 

Fall, 2016: The 1600s, sort of


Talks:

·      Tianye Feng: Find a triangle with rational sides and medians (after Euler)

·      Nik Henderson: On a divergent series of Euler (Sum (-1)^k k!)

·      Caleb Dilsavor: Wallis’s Product

·      Johann Miller: Female Mathematicians: Hypatia, Maria Agnesi, Ada Lovelace

·      Shuchen Mu: The Cayley-Hamilton Theorem

·      Dan Brogan: Series into Continued Fractions (after Euler)

·      Aidan Howells: Perfect Numbers

·      Anthony Ciaverella: Variations on Buffon’s Needle

·      John Johnson: Oresme’s irrational rotations

·      Miles Calabresi: Conics

·      Vilas Weinstein: The Quadrature of the Hyperbola

·      Daniel Murphy: The projection of {z in C: |f(z)|≤2} onto a line (after Cebyshev and Polya)

·       

 

Spring, 2017:


Talks:

·      Michael Crawshaw: A partial fraction series for the cotangent and Euler’s formulas for zeta(2k).

·      Nik Henderson: Euler and Music: Euler’s Tentamen

·      Desmond Coles

·      Shuchen Mu

·      Dan Brogan

·      Aidan Howells

·      Caleb Dilsavor

·      Will Hoffer

·