Famous Mathematician

Task

Where did math come from?

Who invented math?

What do famous Mathematicians have to do with the math we learn today?

This webquest is going to help answer questions like these. By researching and learning about a famous mathematician you will have a better understanding of the beginnings of math and how it affects the math you learn today.

You need to select a mathematician from the following list:

Sir Isaac Newton

Archimedes
Leonhard Euler
Hypatia
Johm Nash
Pythagoras
Leonardo Pisanot Fibonacci
Galileo Galilei
Euclid ofAlexandria
Aristotle
Leonhard Euler
Blaise Pascal
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Grace Hopper
Ptolemy
Rene Descartes
Charles Babbage
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Mary Lucy Cartwright
Eratosthenes
Ada Lovelace
Pierre De Fermat

2. You must research your famous mathematician.

3. You must make a power point presentation. Include pictures to improve your power point presentation. The Power point presentation must have 6 slides divided into these 6 parts:

Process

Part 1 – Title Page

1. Title

2. Mathematician’s name

3. Your name

4. My name

5. Dates of birth and death

Part 2 – Childhood

1. Where and when your mathematician was born

2. Information about your mathematician as a child and about her/his family

3. Her/his early education (Before college)

4. How her/his childhood may have affected her/his math career

Part 3 - Education

1. Where did your mathematician get her/his education as a young adult and also into adulthood

2. What was her/his education like

3. How did her/his education affect her/his math career

Part 4 – Adult Life

1. How did your mathematician’s adult life include math

2. What were some of her/his accomplishments in math

3. Was your mathematician famous for anything outside of the world of math

Part 5 – How The World Has Been Affected

1. How did your mathematician’s accomplishments affect other mathematicians

2. Did she/he have any famous inventions or math formulas

3. How did her/his work in math affect us today

Part 6 – Cited Works

1. Links to the different websites that you used in this project

Follow the process below to complete this assignment.

1. Use the internet to research your mathematician. Once you find a mathematician to research, make sure you can find enough information to complete this assignment.

Important information to look for

Dates of birth and death
Place of birth and where your mathematician was raised
Education
Accomplishments that make this mathematician famous
How this mathematician’s work affected other mathematicians
How this mathematician’s work affects things today
Did your mathematician have any famous inventions
Famous quotes by your mathematician
Anything else you find relevant, interesting, or important about your mathematician

These are some good sites to use, but feel free to explore more sites on your own.

Famous Mathematicians 1

Famous Mathematicians 2

Famous Mathematicians 3

Famous Mathematicians 4

Famous Mathematicians 5

Famous Mathematicians 6

Female Mathematicians

Minority Mathematicians

Famous Mathematicians Pictures

Images

Evaluation

Your evaluation will be based on your power point presentation. See attached rubric.

Rubric

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4	Score
Title Page	Had very little information	Had some information	Had most of the information	Had all of the information
Childhood	An attempt was made, but only some information was given	A fair amount of information was given and accurate	Most of the information was accurate and was given	Accurate information was given
Education	An attempt was made, but only some information was given	A fair amount of information was given and accurate	Most of the information was accurate and was given	Accurate information was given
Adult Life	An attempt was made, but only some information was given	A fair amount of information was given and accurate	Most of the information was accurate and was given	Accurate information was given
How the world was affected	An attempt was made, but only some information was given	A fair amount of information was given and accurate	Most of the information was accurate and was given	Accurate information was given
Works Cited	Had very little properly cited works	Had some properly cited works	Had most of the properly cited works	Had all of the properly cited works
Use of pictures and animation	Some pictures and animation were used and the look of the power point presentation was poor	Some pictures and animation were used and the look of the power point presentation was fair	Pictures and animation were used and the look of the power point presentation was good	Pictures and animation were used and the look of the power point presentation was excellent

Conclusion

Now that you have researched a mathematician you should not only have a better understanding of your mathematician, but you should also have a better understanding of where the math that we learn today came from. You will get to hear about many more mathematicians when we view your classmates presentations. Remember the skills you used in this webquest for future research projects and as you get older and take different math classes think about how they are influenced by the mathematicians you learned about in this project.