For teachers interested in a women in mathematics course with portions dedicated to both mathematics content and equity issues.

Please e-mail greenwaldsj@appstate.edu with any questions or comments.


Syllabus Includes course goals

Daily Class Highlights Includes daily classroom activities, nightly reading assignments and paper due dates.

MathFest 2000 Talk Includes info for teachers on time and effort spent in the course and on what the students learned.

See also Spring 2001 Women and Minorities in Math - A Course with Significant Mathematical Content



Contents

  • Hypatia and her mathematics
  • References Placed in Folders for Papers
  • Equity References Used
  • Women in Math References

    References Used for Hypatia

  • Grinstein's Women of Mathematics - A Biobibliographic Sourcebook
  • To show the danger of relying on printed material - Lynn Osen's chapter on Hypatia, which contains info about Hypatia that is known to be false. (She couldn't have gone mountainclimbing in Alexandria, and the words attributed to her are not hers - we have no letters written by Hypatia. )
  • Textual Studies in Ancient and Medieval Geometry by Wilbur Knorr
  • The Primary Sources for the Life and Work of Hypatia of Alexandria, by Michael A.B. Deakin
  • Hypatia's Mathematics: A Review of Recent Studies by Edith Prentice Mendez

    Web pages detailing class discussions on Hypatia

  • Hypatia's Possible Commentary on Ptolemy's Almagest
  • Hypatia's Possible Commentary on Diophantus
  • Hypatia's Possible Commentary on Apollinus' Conics
  • Hypatia's Possible Commentary on Archimedes Dimensions of the Circle



    Biographic and Math References Placed in Folders for Papers (in addition to Grinstein's Women of Mathematics - A Biobibliographic Sourcebook)

    Folders for Paper 1 which include materials to write a paper on the assigned mathematical topic

    The goals of this paper are for students to learn how to summarize material from many sources, how to write on a focused mathematical topic, and how to deal with inconsistencies in references.

    Maria Agnesi

  • Maria Gaetana Agnesi by C. Truesdell, Archive for History of Exact Science 40 (1989( p. 113-142.
  • Corrections and Additions for "Maria Gaetana Agnesi", Archive for History of Exact Science 43 (1991) p. 385-386.
  • The Witch of Agnesi-Exorcised, by Hubert C. Kennedy, The Mathematics Teacher, 62(1969) p. 480-482.
  • The Names of the Curve of Agnesi by T.F. Mulcrone, American Mathematical Monthly, 64, Issue 5 (5/1957), p. 359-361.
  • Discussions: Relating to Generalizations of the Witch and the Cissoid, by Frederick H. Hodge, American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 25, Issue 5(5/1918), p. 223-225.
  • Properties of the witch of Agnes-application to fitting the shapes of spectral lines, by Roy C. Spencer, Journal of the Optical Society of America, 30 (1940) p. 415-419.

    Sophie Germain

  • The First Case of Fermat's Last Theorem is True for all Prime Exponents up to 714,591,416,091,389, Andrew Granville and Michael Monagan, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 306, Issue 1 (Mar 1988), 329-359.
  • Sophie Germain. An Essay in the History of the Theory of Elasticity, Joseph Dauben, American Mathematical Monthly, 92, Issue 1 (Jan 1985) 64-70.
  • fermat's Last Theorem: Its History and the Nature of the Known Results Concerning it, H.S. Vandiver, American Mathematical Monthly, 53, Issue 10 (Dec 1946), 555-578.

    Sonia Kovalevsky

  • The mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya by Roger Cooke, Springer-Verlag, 1984
  • S. Kovalevsky: A Mathematical Lesson by Karen D. Rappaport, American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 88, Issue 8 (10/81), p. 564-574.
  • Modern dynamics and classical analysis, Michael Tabor, Nature, Vol 310, 26 July 1984, p. 277-282.

    Emmy Noether

  • Emmy Noether, 1882-1935/Auguste Dick; translated by Heidi Blocher, Boston, Basel, Birkhauser, c1980
    (with specific attention given to page158-9
  • Idealtheorie in Rinbereichen, Math Ann 83, 1921, 24-66.
  • Biographies of Mathematicians-Emmy Amalie Noether
  • Generalizations of Noether's Theorem in Classical Mechanics
  • Emmy Noether, by Clark H. Kimberling, American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 79, Issue 2 (Feb, 1972), 136-149.
  • A Brief History and Survey of the Catenary Chain Conjectures, L.J. Ratliff, Jr., American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 88, Issue 3 (Mar, 1981), 169-178.
  • Judith D. Sally - Measuring Neotherian Rings, 1995

    Thinner Folders for Paper 2

    The goals of this paper are (in addition to paper 1 goals) for students to learn how to choose a mathematical topic to focus on, and to learn how to find references (and obtain them).

    The folders do contain some possible mathematical topics to focus on, but (even for those topics) not contain enough information for a complete paper.

    Marjorie Lee Browne.
  • SUNY Buffalo's Mathematicians of the African Diaspora (MAD) Marjorie Lee Browne web page
  • A Note on the Classical Groups by Marjorie Lee Browne, American Mathematical Monthly, Volume 62, Issue 6 (Jun-Jul 1955), p. 424-427.
  • Marjorie Lee Browne: In Memoriam, by Pat Kenschaft of Montclair State College, NJ, AWM Newsletter Sept/Oct 1980, Vol #10, Issue 5, p. 8-11
  • Marjorie Lee Browne, Notable Women in Mathematics, A Biographical Dictionary by Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl, Greenwood, p. 21-25
    Note that she finished all of her requirements in 1949, but the next earliest graduation ceremony was in 1950. When she was alive, the convention was that she obtained her PhD in 1949 because she had fulfilled all of the requirements by then. Some 1999 references change the PhD received date to 1950, due to 1999 conventions, and refer to her as the second African-American woman PhD in math. Yet, in 1949, her PhD date was considered to be 1949 and so she is certainly still one of the 1st two African-American women PhDs in math.
    Thanks to Dawn Wheeler at AWM for tracking down the last two references

    Cathleen Morawetz

  • Cathleen Morawetz: The Mathematics of Waves, Science, Vol 206, 10/12/79, p. 206-207.

    Lack of Folders for Paper 3

    The goals of this paper (in addition to the goals of papers 1 and 2) are for students to choose a woman mathematician, mathematical aspect to focus on, and reasonable references without the use of folders. Instead of folders, students were given lists of women mathematicians (web references and book references) as possibilities for choosing a woman mathematician. To find sources of historical and mathematical information, students could then search MathSci, the web and library sources. Students must then order these sources and determine reliability and usefulness.



    Equity References Used in Addition to Equity in Mathematics Education - Influences of Feminism and Culture by Rogers and Kaiser
  • A Threat in the Air - How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance, by Claude M. Steele, June 1997, American Psychologist, Vol 52, No. 6, p. 613-629.
  • Sex differences in visual-spatial ability: The role of performance factors, by David Goldstein, Diane Haldance, and Carolyn Mitchell, Memory and Cognition, 1990, 18 (5), p. 546-550.
  • Failing at Fairness, by Myra and David Sadker
  • Pygmalion Effect
    -30 minute video CRM Film Productivity and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Pygmalion Effect, and Instructor's Guide
    -Pygmalion in the classroom; teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development [by] Robert Rosenthal [and] Lenore Jacobson Publisher New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston [1968]
    -Pygmalion in the classroom new edition 1992, with an addendum
    -Pygmalion reconsidered; a case study in statistical inference: reconsideration of the Rosenthal-Jacobson data on teacher expectancy [by] Janet D. Elashoff and Richard E. Snow Publisher Worthington, Ohio, C. A. Jones Pub. Co. [c1971]