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Senior Projects 1: Regiomontanus
May. 27th, 2006 06:02 pmI've mentioned before that students here are required to complete Senior Projects as the capstones of their undergraduate careers; I've decided to go into a little detail concerning some of the projects I'm currently overseeing, to give some idea of what the students have to do.
Now, different professors tend to assign different sorts of projects, of course. We have a few people who specialize in Mathematics Education; their projects generally have to do with pedagogy. One of our specialists in Operations Research assigns fairly tough, frequently practical projects. Me, I like to go the historical route.
Student #1 wanted to do something with a geometrical flavor; after some discussion, we settled on the work of Johannes Müller of Königsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus (from the Latinized name of his home city). He was a fifteenth-century mathematician/astronomer, best known for his work on spherical trigonometry. His On Triangles was the first European text on the subject, and became the model for all future work. My student's assignment is to read and master that book; her paper and oral presentation will involve describing his work in modern language, together with some applications.
This is a bit harder than it sounds. Of course, Regiomontanus wrote in Latin; equally of course, she's reading it in translation. However, most translations of old mathematical works are themselves rather old; couple that with an attempt at faithful translation, and you get prose that, even by mathematical standards, is smothering. Add in the fact that modern algebraic symbolism hadn't yet been developed: everything is in words, with perhaps a few abbreviations...
So, what's the book about? I'll discuss that under the cut, with - as before - the technicalities banished to blockquotes.
( Spherical Trigonometry )
Now, different professors tend to assign different sorts of projects, of course. We have a few people who specialize in Mathematics Education; their projects generally have to do with pedagogy. One of our specialists in Operations Research assigns fairly tough, frequently practical projects. Me, I like to go the historical route.
Student #1 wanted to do something with a geometrical flavor; after some discussion, we settled on the work of Johannes Müller of Königsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus (from the Latinized name of his home city). He was a fifteenth-century mathematician/astronomer, best known for his work on spherical trigonometry. His On Triangles was the first European text on the subject, and became the model for all future work. My student's assignment is to read and master that book; her paper and oral presentation will involve describing his work in modern language, together with some applications.
This is a bit harder than it sounds. Of course, Regiomontanus wrote in Latin; equally of course, she's reading it in translation. However, most translations of old mathematical works are themselves rather old; couple that with an attempt at faithful translation, and you get prose that, even by mathematical standards, is smothering. Add in the fact that modern algebraic symbolism hadn't yet been developed: everything is in words, with perhaps a few abbreviations...
So, what's the book about? I'll discuss that under the cut, with - as before - the technicalities banished to blockquotes.
( Spherical Trigonometry )
